Group 5- Linda, Elijah, Jelah, Nancy, & La’Gerald

 Kai = Change  Zen = Good  Kaizen means “good change”

 Kaizen is making small incremental changes to improve productivity and reduce wastes  The goal is to eliminate the Non-Value Added Activities (i.e. walking, transporting parts, generating useless reports)

 Identify obstacles and threats at an early stage and are solved then.  Small issues that are overlooked can snowball into bigger problems.  Reduce waste through effective management.  There are always more effective ways to do things  Encourage employees to bring in ideas and suggestions  Must be done in a way where no one is blamed and that the best process is put in place.

 Toyota came up with the “Toyota Production System” which strived for continuous improvement  In 1986, Masaaki Imai, the developer of Kaizen, wrote a book called “Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success”  Westerns read the book and “discovered” Kazien

 Reduces waste  Improve space utilization and product quality  Higher employee moral and job satisfaction  Teaches to solve everyday problem

 Sorting  Keeping only essential tools and items  Simplifying  Eliminate extra motion  Sweeping  Cleaning work area  Standardizing  Standardized work practices  Sustaining  Maintaining standards

 Resistance to change  Lack of proper procedures to implement new process  Too many suggestions can be confusing and a waste of time  Difficult to implement in large scale process, because it requires a lot of analyzing

 Imai, Masaaki (1986). Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success Imai, Masaaki  Liker, Jeffrey; Meier, David (2006). The Toyota Way Fieldbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.  Laraia, Anthony C.; Patricia E. Moody; Robert W. Hall (1999). The Kaizen Blitz: accelerating breakthroughs in productivity and performance. John Wiley and Sons. p. 26. ISBN Retrieved 6 February 2010.The Kaizen Blitz: accelerating breakthroughs in productivity and performanceISBN