India organization (XYZ Entreprise) using Kaizen Events
Kaizen Events are small events for managers and employees (operators) of a process, in order to improve the process. They were created in Japan by they have been useful as well in other countries like India. They are a very efficient way to improve a process with a low sigma score. They have also been helpful to convince organizations that are new to Six Sigma that this method works.
They are a tool that, as I have already said, gather operators, managers, and even owners of a process in a place. In most cases they use flowcharts to visualize the process, and, at the end they come up with improvements of the process. It is about sharing ideas of everyone involved in the process; so, the operators (the once that are closer to the process), can actually give their opinions on how to improve the process.
All the parts related to the process are together so, it is not only the manager who decide how to improve, but also the operators. And, they are closer to the process so they have a lot to share.
The article that I have found talks about an Indian small- and medium-scale manufacturing organization called XYZ Enterprises. They manufacture automobile parts, and at the moment they are under a lot of pressure not just from competitors, but also from customers, in order to produce high quality products with a low price. The customers have high expectations on the quality so the manufactures have to implement continuous improvements to meet these expectations, by improving the technologies, methodologies and principles. Their goal is minimize cost, delivery time, and increase quality.
So what the XYZ Enterprises is doing is training their employees to understand the concept of lean and lean principles so they can optimize the product and process by eliminating waste. They also focus on the development of new skills in their employees by teaching them those new skills. They are also very conscious about improvement, so, in the article it is shown how they have structured their processes and analyse them. They did not just train employees, they also analyse the whole organization so they can focus in the defects and improve them.
But, one thing they have recently done is performing Kaizen events. The first one they did was to eliminate the quality problem with the wheels. In this events they come up with a dial indicator that was recommended by one of the operators. In the second one there was only six members, where they had a brainstorming session. All of the suggestions were discussed.
So, even though these event were developed in Japan, other countries like India are using it because they see that they work. The problem that I see is that, for an organization like XYZ Enterprises, that has been using improvement methods in the past it is easy to implement Kaizen events. But, in other companies were they are not so close to these methods it is hard to convince the managers to include their operator´s opinions in their final decisions. So, how could these kind of companies be convinced to have Kaizen events? Or even harder, how a country, a culture could be change to introduce these practices?
https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/kaizen-event/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00170-018-1684-8
I think the biggest obstacle in implementing kaizen is making sure all of the employees in the company are committed to improving the processes. Since kaizen is a team effort of continuous improvement, everyone needs to be involved in order for it work (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/7-conditions-successful-implementation-kaizen-strategy-17802.html). With that being said, a manager must be willing to work with and motivate employees to get on board with kaizen. As Carmen pointed out, this could be hard depending on the attitude of the managers. Hopefully managers get to their positions because they want what is best for the company, so they would be willing to work with their employees to do so. Especially since kaizen has proved to be so successful, I hope companies would be willing to try it out. I think working well in a team is definitely something that can be learned, so I think even companies that originally have trouble with kaizen will eventually learn how to make it work best so that they can be successful.
I think you bring up a good point, that kaizen isn’t a mindset to implement easily within a company. Toyota is a rare example, and should be viewed as such. Looking at an outside article, their entire company truly is centered around this concept of kaizen. Starting with employee training, to production, to management, kaizen is not just a practice, but rather the nucleus of the entire company. Now, as a small/mid-sized company XYZ Enterprise may have the ability to ingrain kaizen into its company. But like you mentioned, it already had continuous improvement practices in place, and for a larger, potentially international company with thousands and thousands of employees, it would take a significant amount of time, effort, and money for the process to truly have an effect on the company. Nonetheless, I do think since Toyota’s emphasis on this process decades ago, companies established since have taken note during their creation and many organizations today do have values/mission statements/company structures that involve kaizen. However, as you mentioned, for an already-established company to implement kaizen, it would be no easy task.
Source:https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/auto/toyota-kaizen-methods/story/186340.html