Kaizen an approach to lean manufacturing. It is a philosophy of constant, continual improvement that can be employed by a company to reduce waste. Kaizen comes from two Japanese words: Kai (improvement) and Zen (good). The strength of Kaizen lies in participation of all workers at every level of a company to contribute small suggestions to improve what they do for the business. In the most simple terms continuous improvement is the efforts of all parts of a company to do what they do better. As a lean manufacturing tool, Kaizen improves quality, productivity, safety, and workplace culture. This occurs by applying small daily changes that yield major improvements over time.

Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement. It is also a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, and eliminates overly hard work. A Kaizen company values smarter work, not harder work. Kaizen empowers employees to perform experiments on their work in a methodical way allowing them to examine a problem and make improvements.

While Kaizen usually delivers small improvements, the culture of continual aligned small improvements and standardization yields large results in terms of overall improvement in productivity. Kaizen methodology includes making changes and monitoring results, then adjusting. Large-scale pre-planning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

In this module you’ll learn about

- Kaizen
- How it works to reduce waste
- How to apply the PDCA cycle to analyze improvement suggestions and,
- An introduction to other lean tools that can be used to reduce waste