Kaizen Philosophy
Kaizen Philosophy: A Review of Literature
Jagdeep Singh* and Harwinder Singh**
The ultimate objective of manufacturing industries today is to increase productivity through system simplification, organizational potential and incremental improvements by using modern techniques like Kaizen. Most of the manufacturing industries are currently encountering a necessity to respond to rapidly changing customer needs, desires and tastes. For industries, to remain competitive and retain market share in this global market, continuous improvement of manufacturing system processes has become necessary. Competition and continuously increasing standards of customer satisfaction has proven to be the endless driver of organizations performance improvement. Kaizen refers to continuous improvement in performance, cost and quality. Kaizen strives to empower the workers, increase worker satisfaction, facilitates a sense of accomplishment, thereby creating a pride of work. It not only ensures that manufacturing processes become leaner and fitter, but eliminate waste where value is added. Kaizen by now is a widely discussed, and applied manufacturing philosophy, in a variety of industries across the globe. This paper discusses different articles that have been published in this field and presents a review of literature.
Introduction
Kaizen is a Japanese word that has become common in many western companies. The word indicates a process of continuous improvement of the standard way of work (Chen et al., 2000). It is a compound word involving two concepts: Kai (change) and Zen (for the better) (Palmer, 2001). The term comes from Gemba Kaizen meaning ‘Continuous Improvement’ (CI). Continuous Improvement is one of the core strategies for excellence in production, and is considered vital in today’s competitive environment (Dean and Robinson, 1991). It calls for endless effort for improvement involving everyone in the organization (Malik and YeZhuang, 2006).
* M. Tech Student,
Jagdeep Singh* and Harwinder Singh**
The ultimate objective of manufacturing industries today is to increase productivity through system simplification, organizational potential and incremental improvements by using modern techniques like Kaizen. Most of the manufacturing industries are currently encountering a necessity to respond to rapidly changing customer needs, desires and tastes. For industries, to remain competitive and retain market share in this global market, continuous improvement of manufacturing system processes has become necessary. Competition and continuously increasing standards of customer satisfaction has proven to be the endless driver of organizations performance improvement. Kaizen refers to continuous improvement in performance, cost and quality. Kaizen strives to empower the workers, increase worker satisfaction, facilitates a sense of accomplishment, thereby creating a pride of work. It not only ensures that manufacturing processes become leaner and fitter, but eliminate waste where value is added. Kaizen by now is a widely discussed, and applied manufacturing philosophy, in a variety of industries across the globe. This paper discusses different articles that have been published in this field and presents a review of literature.
Introduction
Kaizen is a Japanese word that has become common in many western companies. The word indicates a process of continuous improvement of the standard way of work (Chen et al., 2000). It is a compound word involving two concepts: Kai (change) and Zen (for the better) (Palmer, 2001). The term comes from Gemba Kaizen meaning ‘Continuous Improvement’ (CI). Continuous Improvement is one of the core strategies for excellence in production, and is considered vital in today’s competitive environment (Dean and Robinson, 1991). It calls for endless effort for improvement involving everyone in the organization (Malik and YeZhuang, 2006).
* M. Tech Student,
References: 64 The Icfai University Journal of Operations Management, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 2009 13 66 The Icfai University Journal of Operations Management, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 2009 40 Yeo et al., 1995 Newitt, 1996 Womack and Jones, 1996 Ghalayini et al., 1997 Imai, 1997 Williamson, 1997 The author describes the role of target costing and Kaizen costing concepts in making continuous improvement Table 1: Works on the Concept of Kaizen Philosophy Author and Year Cheser, 1998 Key Findings Sheridan, 1997 Adams et al., 1999 Bond, 1999 Savolainen, 1999 Two case studies have been performed to increase the understanding of the processes and dynamics of continuous improvement implementation 70 The Icfai University Journal of Operations Management, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 2009 Annexure Table 2: Case Studies Related to Kaizen Philosophy Author and Year Burns, 2000 Key Findings Irane and Sharp, The authors discuss the ideal situation of implementing continuous 1997 improvement approach. Bassant, 2000 The outcomes of the survey performed by CI research advantage at UK firms have been described in the paper. The Icfai University Journal of Operations Management, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 2009