The Kaizen concept comes from the Japanese word for “continuous improvement”. Widely considered to be one of the foundational pillars of Lean philosophy, the concept honors the journey towards continuous improvement, as opposed to simply reaching the destination. Implementing Kaizen means striving to create a company culture where every employee is involved in the organization’s growth and development. When employees are engaged at every level of the organization, a powerful driving force is created that continuously propels development forward.
In a nutshell, Kaizen is meant to help companies utilize resources, increase productivity and get the most out of their journey toward improvement, both on an individual employee level and a company level. Improving your business is no different from lifting weights. It’s impossible to lift the heaviest weight at the first attempt; however, if you train consistently, you’ll become stronger and stronger every day. Likewise, a lot of small improvements over time turn into huge improvements in the business.
There are several different methods within Kaizen that can be implemented to your business. For example, the PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) and RCA (Root Cause Analysis) methods.
PDCA is an incredible tool for understanding and improving business. This tool is symbolized by a cycle consisting of the following steps:
Another way to use Kaizen is to conduct a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) following the “Five Whys” method. As the method’s name suggests, you ask “why” as many times as necessary until you get to the root cause of the problem. For example:
The traditional Kaizen concept focuses on improving efficiency based on what can be seen with the “naked eye”. However, you can take it a step further by implementing Kaizen digitally with Mevisio. In today’s digital world, there are endless amounts of data that you can use to improve production, and it would be a waste not to use it.
With our boards, you can clearly visualize, analyze, and track all the stages in your production line in real-time. This enables you to recognize potential “bottlenecks” early on and prevent them, so you can resolve a problem before it arises. Your managers can track the teams’ progress and delegate improvement tasks wherever needed. The boards also make it easier than ever for teams to share information, report problems, and suggest ideas on how to develop the business. All that makes using the PDCA and RCA methods both effective and streamlined. Discover all of the advantages for yourself. Mevisio makes your journey towards continuous improvement a walk in the park.
With Mevisio, you can clearly visualize your company goals, as well as the feedback from employees to help achieve those goals. By visualizing things like accidents, quality issues, or delivery delays in your daily operations management, you can quickly and efficiently take measures to ensure that the incidents never happen again.