Kaizen is what?
continuous improvement
goal for kaizen
maintain and improve upon standards
industry goals:
increase revenue, decrease cost, boost morale
3M experience
increase yield and decrease lead time
every company’s procedure for kaizen is different
- Plan-do-check-act
- 3M holds a kaizen event run by the lean six sigma division
- smaller companies allocate fewer resources to kaizen. it might be as limited to suggestion boxes
tenants of TPS
- continuous improvement
- respect for humanity
capital investments will need to be…
approved by upper management
Kaizen basic info
- no limitations on an improvement - everything adds up over time
- gradually improving, not sudden shifts and rapid changes
steps of kaizen
- creative brainstorming
- issue generation
- compile master issue list
- assign/classify issues into SQDCM (probably 2 groupings: quality and throughput)
- divide into classification groups and generate assignable corrective actions
- compile and prioritize master corrective action list
- assign action items to individuals
- complete kaizen
Bystander Effect
no commitment and accountability
Complete Kaizen (steps)
- fill in columns with previous info
- set open, target, and close dates
- generate status colors
open date
date of kaizen
target date
target date for corrective action completion
close date
latest date action can be complete
yellow
corrective action incomplete and it is within time period between open and close date
green
corrective action complete
red
corrective action is incomplete and is past close date
Measurement (SQDCM)
- SQDCM: safety, quality, delivery, cost, morale
- measurement drives continuous improvement towards standards
data should be displayed in 2 ways:
- trended periodically: the shorter the frequency the better. trended data tells the organization whether the area is improving, deteriorating, or stagnate over time
- pareto data for each measure if possible. pareto data tells the organization where to target improvement initiatives
