Operational Excellence for Business Excellence: The Kaizen Way!

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Are the above not the drivers of Business Excellence? Given below is a four level system that can help organizations to create a culture of Operational Excellence or Continuous Improvement. Unless improvements happen daily, nothing is going to change. Therefore, it is very important to practice Daily Kaizen. The four levels are mentioned below:

• Organize teams (standardize team meetings, set a mission and get clear KPIs)

• Organize workspaces (5S in theory and practice)

• Normalize (Standardize do-check-act circle to adopt best methods and reduce time wasted)

• Make improvement (plan-do-check-act circle to simplify and optimize the work flow with each level going through a standardized process of pilot selection, team analysis, train the trainer programs, visualization and audits.

What is Daily Kaizen?

• Focused on changing behavious in line with Kaizen approach

• Involve all employees in frequent Kaizen actions (important).

• Focus on Kaizen leadership by the Gemba (real place) leaders.

• Faciliate implementation of wok standards

• Control key KPIs on a frequent basis and act immediatly with counter measures

• Create a culture of operational excellence (OE) or continuous improvement (CI).

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Why should organizations implement Daily Kaizen?

• Small, daily changes lead to big, long term improvements

• People take ownership for their work

• New habits are formed

• Teams and leaders know what to do and how to do it better

• People learn to spot and eliminate waste and feel encouraged to make suggestions

• Mistakes are not hidden, but seen as gifts or lessons

• Improvements are based on daily, doable, small changes

• Ideas come from the employees themselves

• Small improvements require less time and capital investment

• Teamwork improves naturally

• People are motivated from within

• It humanizes the workplace

• Quick wins occur

• Simple, visual and accesible standards are created

• People at all levels are inspired to make changes

• Everyone sees sustainable changes in a very short time

The OE or CI culture is critical for sustainability; and to change it, we have to change our management system. If we stop following through OE or CI practices owing to things that seem stable and in control, it is certain that we will soon face unstable and out-of-control processes and fall back to zero.

* The author is Head of Marketing at the Kaizen Institute India & Africa

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