Kaizen

           

Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning “Change for the good” or as we have come to know it today as meaning “Continuous Improvement.” The meaning was initially used as a Japanese philosophy of continuously improving everything we come in contact with during our lifetime.

When we refer Kaizen to our place of work it means to improve all facets, functions and processes within that business, from enquiry, concept, product or service processing, administration, office work, engineering, maintenance, IT, stores, logistics, planning, everything we do within that business and their suppliers should be subjected to Kaizen.  By continuously improving tilization systems, processes and support activities we improve Quality, Delivery Time, Service and Cost.

Kaizen is generally thought to be one of the essential and key parts of Lean and aims to eliminate Waste in the form of Non Value Adding work and when applied through employee teamwork, tilizati the work place.

Three Forms of Waste

1.      Mura

Unevenness in work demand or work flow. When embarking on JIT the first thing to do is to establish tiliza work flow (Heijunka) then create a system or combination of systems that triggers and signals pull work flow.

2. Muri

Having a greater demand than capacity in any given time or overburdening the process, series of processes or system. We can all generally relate to making mistakes when we are rushed or stressed this is caused by Muri. So we establish the capacity for work, (Noting that JIT needs for us to only plan to use 85% of capacity for some flexibility) and then ensure we do not try and force more into the system than it can handle.

8.                                                          Muda

There are type 1 and 2 Muda.
Type 1 is the necessary but non value adding waste. This is where from a business perspective we do it to meet regulations, cannot afford to duplicate, such as Pharmacies on every floor of a hospital, photocopiers, faxes and printers on every desk etc.
Type 2 is unnecessary, non value adding waste.

Muda is where the 7+1 lean waste resides.

1. Transport – Moving materials, people, files, documents, items of any type, products, information, by any means including electronically.

2. Inventory – Storage of any type of any item, information, document.

3. Motion – Bending, reaching, turning, lifting, and equipment left idling, any motion not creating value, like drilling air before contacting the work piece.

4. Waiting – in queues, for parts, for information, for instructions, for schedules, for equipment, for software, for previous process and for testing etc.

5. Over producing or production – basically making or producing more than the downstream customer immediately requires. Referred to as the biggest waste of lean.

6. Over Processing – Activity that does not add value or features for the end user, such as using materials of higher grade than required, producing to tighter tolerances than necessary, longer vintage time in wine making, over filling etc.

7. Defects or defective work – Includes any rework, scrap, incorrect information, inspection requirements, over compensating for excessive variation.

8. Skills and tilization – Not affectively using the collective talents, skills and knowledge of all employees and suppliers.