Holding Kaizen events at your company

When businesses are trying to integrate Kaizen mindsets and philosophies, it's common practice to appoint Lean leaders – people who will lead the companies in the transition to becoming more efficient. It's up to these people to try and bring their colleagues on board by helping them to understand the meaning of Lean and how it applies to various company functions.

So how can Kaizen leaders reinforce these practices and mindsets and implement them into the workplace? While there are a number of approaches that businesses can take, perhaps the most effective is holding Kaizen events. These events tend to be team-based sessions based on solving short-term problems.

Kaizen events focus on making immediate improvements to company processes and involve training, Current State Analysis, Future State Design and implementation. In layman's terms, that means the definition of problems and goals, the documentation of the current state of operations, brainstorming and developing an end goal, how changes will be implemented, the development of a follow-up plan, the presentation of results and celebration of any successes.

There are a variety of strategies businesses can use to facilitate these goals, but events are most often planned through value stream mapping. This helps companies to target mission-critical operations and identify the right areas on which to focus continuous improvement initiatives.

What kind of problems can be solved with Kaizen events? The answer is simple: a significant number of them. Sessions can be used to address issues such as organizing the workplace, developing a pull system, improving the manufacturability of specific products or services, decreasing the changeover time on various pieces of equipment in the production chain, etc. Not every problem can be solved by a Kaizen event, and as the Kaizen leader, it's crucial you understand this before organizing these sessions.

Getting people on board with Kaizen events

Kaizen events are very helpful, especially when Lean mindsets and practices are still relatively new to most people within the company. That said, Lean leaders may have a bit of difficulty trying to convince other managers to go along with these events – after all, the sessions often require employee attendance for days at a time, which could negatively impact production.

In the face of this adversity, Reliable Plant argues that an effectively planned Kaizen event is a significant value add to the company. Yes, it may cost a day or two of production, but the business solutions and strategies derived from a session could make up for the operational halt in the long-term. In many cases, the continuous improvements discussed during Kaizen events will make other operations that much more efficient. It's akin to actually healing a wound, rather than just strapping a bandage to it.

Any company looking to make major changes to the way it is operating has to expect a bit of downtime. For example, if a manufacturer brings on a new supplier, it's going to take a while before the service is flowing smoothly as the two partners get used to doing business with each other. Integrating Kaizen is no different in that regard, and managers should be prepared to sacrifice a bit of time upfront to develop more efficient practices that save money in the long run.