Kaizen Teian 2

Guiding Continuous Improvement Through Employee Suggestions

Productivity Press Development Team

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351436243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Operations
• Index: Business

More than a guide to establishing a proposal system, this volume presents methods for teaching know-how. It gives each reader the principles for thinking creatively about improving his or her own work.This highly practical book is filled with easily understood explanations and examples of how to teach your employees to pursue excellence through kaizen teian.Before you can institute a successful kaizen teian program, you must have a firm understanding of its underlying principles and rules. This book concentrates on making those principles clear and focuses on the importance of consistently implementing proposals. Actual examples of implemented proposals from five leading Japanese companies illustrate the principles described, and numerous figures and case studies add clarity throughout. If you are ready to tap into the full potential of your work force, this book will help you to train them to seek out new and ever better ways to do their work.

PART ONE

Basic Concepts of Kaizen

What is kaizen? Without clearly understanding what it is, we cannot practice kaizen or provide guidance for others. In this part of the book we consider the main concepts behind kaizen from the following four viewpoints.

1. Kaizen means developing abilities.

2. Kaizen means solving problems.

3. Kaizen means devising measures that deal with causes of problems.

4. Kaizen means devising measures that deal with the real causes of problems.

1

Kaizen Means Developing Abilities

In talking about kaizen, you often hear the words “methods for creative thinking,” “idea generation,” or “original thinking techniques.” People sometimes talk about the need for “mental gymnastics” or “a change of creative pace.” Exploring such subjects is not a waste of time when you’re looking for creative ideas. It is probably better to think like this than to do nothing at all.

On the other hand, creativity enhancement techniques alone cannot replace a proper study of kaizen. They represent only a small part of continuous improvement, a part that in no way guarantees “good kaizen.”

Creative thinking workshops usually have the following characteristics in common:

1. The group discusses assigned problems.

2. There is never a single solution to a problem; every problem is considered from various viewpoints, and various solutions are proposed.

3. Several methods are presented for getting beyond preconceptions and fixed ideas. Methods are introduced that help generate new ideas.

4. Unique or unorthodox solutions and decisions are praised.

5. A broad view of the situation is taken, so that group members become more adaptable to various interpretations of a complex situation.

6. Once agreement is reached on a solution, workers immediately begin implementation in their jobs.

Clearly, this process is pleasant and stimulating. It promotes a sense that many more new ideas will come to light this way. Unfortunately, it is not very useful in kaizen activity. What is written in books and discussed in seminars often bears little resemblance to reality. People who are initially enthusiastic about applying these methods to their improvement activities soon lose interest or question whether the methods really work on the job.

Why don’t these methods ensure successful kaizen proposal activities? They are in the same league as “surefire methods for getting rich” or “how to make millions in real estate.” The people who really know how to succeed draw on much more than little tips or tricks. They use a more fundamental approach, a method with substance to it. The same approach must be taken with kaizen activities.

THREE ESSENTIAL STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF KAIZEN

Real kaizen is made up of three essential components:

1. Perceptiveness: Discovering problems and pointing out what type of kaizen is required to fix them.

2. Idea development: Devising creative solutions to problems.

3. Decision making, implementation, and effect: Deciding which kaizen proposals are the best and which can be implemented, planning how to implement them, and then actually implementing them. The effect will follow.

Three Levels of Kaizen Teian Activities

Creative thinking methods and exercises support only the second of these three essential elements.

Perceptiveness

The starting point of kaizen is a problem. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t need to do kaizen. If you have problems but don’t notice them, you won’t be motivated to make improvements. Only when a problem has been discovered can creative thinking, honed by past experience, start to play an important role.

Most of our education was designed to teach us how to solve problems that were assigned to us. Consequently, we grew up believing that problem solving means simply solving assigned problems. Such a concept is far too limited for the business environment. Here, the ability to discover problems is an essential precondition to problem solving.

Certainly, teaching new employees to solve assigned problems is very important in kaizen activity. At the initial stages, supervisors should make employees aware of areas where there are problems, give them hints about how to do kaizen, and assign tasks. At some point, however, new employees must learn to recognize tasks that need doing and to identify job-related problems on their own. This ability is the starting point of kaizen, because it is here that the worker begins to attack the problems inherent in the status quo.

Idea Development

Because this stage involves coming up with creative ideas and proposals, creative thinking methods and idea generation techniques are useful. They help you to free yourself from preconceived ideas and thereby enable you to study the problem from different angles.

Some people, however, seem to know everything about the theory of creative thinking yet hardly ever have practical ideas. On the other hand, you do not need to study such methods to come up with good ideas.

Making continuous improvement in your work is not like creating a breakthrough invention; it does not require the same amount of original thinking. The types of ideas we are talking about here generally are not things one would seek a patent for. For this reason, it is not necessary to cultivate and practice any specialized skills. Masaaki Imai notes in his book, Kaizen, that common sense is often all that is needed.

In kaizen, therefore, you don’t have to understand complicated concepts like “change of creative pace” or “the power of originality”; anything you think about can become a proposal for improvement. An ordinary kaizen proposal is much better than a “creative” but impractical idea; it is probably going to be much easier to adopt and implement, which means that it is much more useful.

Decision, Implementation, and Effect

Another difference between kaizen and creative thinking methods is that only kaizen comprises a decision, implementation, and effect.

If mental exercise was the only thing needed, we could come up with a concept and be satisfied with that. But the real work of doing kaizen would be still ahead of us.

Kaizen is valuable only when it is implemented. Ideas that cannot be implemented or that fail to be realized are meaningless. That is why we must always ask ourselves how an idea can be implemented given present limitations. We must learn how to make a kaizen proposal into reality, and accept only ideas that meet this condition.

This aspect of kaizen activity distinguishes it from idea contests and competitions. Such contests, designed to attract and reward unique ideas, have little to do with kaizen activity. Realization and effect determine the ultimate value of kaizen.

Industrial activity is subject to many limitations, such as cost, quality, payment and delivery, safety, and so on. Ideas that ignore these limitations are useless. Kaizen involves ideas that clearly take into account these conditions. As managers, we need to understand the situation at our company and conditions at our workplace, and to make decisions that are based on this situation.

Whether or not they realize it, employees who take part in the kaizen proposal activities improve their judgment and implementation skills. Kaizen activity that does not include implementation and effect is no more than an interesting game. This game is not particularly useful for developing the employee skills that are important in industrial environment.

Three Essential Elements of Kaizen and Kaizen Teian Activity

Perceptiveness and Implementation Outweigh Creative Thinking

Creative thinking is not the only important component of kaizen activity. Indeed, the role of creative thinking methods has been greatly overemphasized.

In determining how to provide guidance and education for kaizen activity, you must first clearly formulate what is required for kaizen activity, how to develop skills through education and guidance, and what the objectives are. You should recognize that the abilities first to identify problems and then to select and implement solutions are critical to the development of job-related skills and to promotion of kaizen in the workplace. As you develop review standards and educational activities, it is probably a good idea to pay more attention to these aspects of kaizen than to creative thinking methods.

THREE STEPS NECESSARY FOR PROMOTING PROPOSALS AND DEVELOPING ABILITIES

The ultimate objective of kaizen activity is to develop in all employees the three skills previously discussed:

1. Perceptiveness

2. Idea development

3. Decision making and implementation

A kaizen teian (improvement proposal) system does not need to be perfect from its outset. In fact, it would be unreasonable to demand perfection from a kaizen system that has just been introduced. Being too strict with people who are writing improvement proposals for the first time usually provokes a negative reaction.

Although ultimately you will ask employees for well-prepared proposals that include the three main elements, a proposal system must be promoted step-by-step. It might also be useful to deal with each process separately, from perception of problems to implementation.

Step 1: Developing Perceptiveness

This first step requires employees to take a good look at the workplace to see if something in the work needs improvement. Perhaps there are quality problems, or maybe awkward procedures make the work difficult. At this stage, the focus is on discovering or identifying problems, so these are the activities that will be evaluated.

During the same stage you will be encouraging all employees to participate in improvement activity. At the very least, you want employees to identify problems and irregularities, write down the things they are not happy about, and bring hidden problems out in the open. This activity alone is of great importance because it brings out valuable information.

Step 2: Developing Good Solutions

At this stage employees ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Publisher’s Message
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part One: Basic Concepts of Kaizen
• Part Two: Principles of Kaizen
• Part Three: Providing Guidance for Kaizen Teian Activities— Principles and Rules
• Part Four: Kaizen Teian Examples
• Postscript
• Index