Kaizen Flashcards
What is kaizen?
Japanese term for “continuous improvement”
emphasizes incremental, low risk, easily accomplished, and low-cost process improvement
kaizen = iterative + good
What are the four kaizen levels?
individual, at work station (Gemba)
work team/mini kaizen
flow kaizen/cross-functional
supply chain/reps from diff. companies
What are kaizen activities?
D - document
E - engage
F - focus
E - encourage
A - aware
T - take action
What is a kaizen blitz or event?
leverage the knowledge, skills, and talents of 5-10 people from different areas pulled out for 2-5 days to focus on defining and implementing improvements that will generate rapid results for a specific problem
What are the kaizen event characteristics?
structured approach
aggressive objectives
short time period
full-time team membership
What is the flow of a kaizen event typically?
PDCA
What are the substeps of plan?
- identify and define the problem
- select the target process
- identify the team
What are the substeps of do?
- observe the process
- analyze the process
- identify the solution
- identify targets
- pilot
- implement
What are the substeps of check?
- monitor
- measure
What are the substeps of act?
standardize
What are the phases of a kaizen event?
- planning
- implementing changes
- verifying effectiveness
- following up to sustain
What are some key components to planning a kaizen event?
- obtain commitment for resources
- select facilitator
- recruit team members from relevant areas
- train team members in the tools being used
- provide current state info
- reserve space
- communicate to everyone from top to bottom so everyone understands objective
What are the key components of the implementing phase?
- identify waste, defects, and root causes
- define future state with target data
- brainstorm improvements
- prioritize improvements
- test different improvements
- measure, report progress, train
- make initial changes
What are the key components of the verifying phase?
- verify data collected
- make sure changes are effective at addressing the problem
- share results with stakeholders
- decide next steps
- make changes at larger scale
- recognize team for achievements
What are the key components of the follow-up phase?
- track new process
- daily kaizen
