Collaborating for Change: Gemba Kaizen

by Masaaki Imai, Brian Heymans

Summary This booklet gives an overview of Gemba Kaizen, a change strategy which builds a culture able to initiate and sustain change by providing skills to improve process, enabling employees to make daily improvements, installing JIT systems and lean process methods in administrative systems, and improving equipment reliability and product quality. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Description Kaizen, as an organizational change process, emerged in postwar Japan through U.S. economic reconstruction assistance. Companies that embraced Western best practices created world-class products and services. Kaizen is a holistic process using the World-Class Manufacturing strategies of Just in Time, Total Quality Management, Total Productive Maintenance, and Total Employee Improvement. Its goal is to create customer value using value-added processes with minimal waste. It succeeds when employees “catch the fever” of continuous improvement. The essential notion of Kaizen is that * All work can be improved * All work processes contain waste * Reducing or eliminating waste provides real customer value What has captured the imagination of Western business is the Gemba Kaizen workshop. It is a four-to-five-day learning and implementation event in which six to ten managers and workers learn Kaizen concepts, principles, methods, and tools and implement them in real time. It is equally applicable to factory floor situations, business development, and administrative systems and processes. The Gemba Kaizen workshop is a rapid-change process, providing the skills for long-term continuous improvement. It creates a culture where waste is constantly attached and eliminated by everybody, every day. A strength of the Gemba Kaizen workshop is that it improves real work processes, implementing the business strategy in real time. Learning coupled with rapid implementation focuses participants on common goals. They quickly learn the value of their diverse skills and experiences. The intense focus and immediate application unite the team, generating a newfound synergy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Synopsis The Collaborating for Change series offers concise, comprehensive overviews of 14 leading change strategies in a convenient, inexpensive format. Adapted from chapters in The Change Handbook, each approximately 48-page booklet is written by the originator of the change strategy or an expert practitioner, and includes * An example of the strategy in action
* Tips for getting started
* An outline of roles, responsibilities, and relationships
* Conditions for success
* Keys to sustaining results
* Thought-provoking questions for discussion If you're deciding on a change strategy for your organization and you need a short, focused treatment of several alternatives to distribute to your colleagues... Or if you've decided on a change strategy and want to disseminate information about it to get everyone on board, the Collaborating for Change booklets are the ideal choice. Other titles in the Collaborating for Change * Appreciative Inquiry
* The Conference Model
* Future Search
* Gemba Kaizen
* Open Space Technology
* The Organization Workshop
* Participative Design Workshop
* Preferred Futuring
* Real Time Strategic Change
* The Search Conference
* The Strategic Forum
* The Think Like a Genius Process
* Whole-Scale Change
* Whole Systems Approach

Genres: Business

36 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2000

About the author

Management Guru, Kaizen Pioneer, Founder of Kaizen Institutex

Masaaki Imai is the Founder of Kaizen Institute which was established in Switzerland in 1985 to help companies implement the practice of kaizen and the various systems and tools known today as Lean Management. Today Kaizen Institute Consulting Group (KICG) is the leading global operational excellence consultancy with over 400 professionals located in offices across 30 countries serving clients in 25 languages.

Over the last three decades Mr. Imai has authored books and articles, held lectures on kaizen, quality, leadership, Lean and other related management subjects, has consulted with global companies, introduced kaizen as a commonsense continuous improvement approach on every inhabited continent.
Mr. Imai’s contribution has been one of integrating various kaizen management practices, such as Just-in-time, TQM, and TPM, into the cultural environments of client companies. He was also the first to organize study missions to Japan to study kaizen and Lean methods, a service that Kaizen Institute continues today, having led more than 200 groups and 4,000 people.

Mr. Imai speaks not only to leadership issues but also to frontline issues at the gemba or “the real place where value is added”. He understands the steps required to make a company world-class and moving it from a result-oriented to process-oriented company.

Reviews

[Warren]

658.5 I31
RMIT Bundoora East

NOTE: There's also a 2012 version:
Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense Approach to a Continuous Improvement Strategy.
Masaaki Imai McGraw-Hill Professional, 2012.