STUDENTfacturED practices Kaizen on a daily basis by encouraging students to suggest improvements in the processes that they carry out. They participate in this by filling out Kaizen cards. A kaizen card is shown below

A Kaizen card

A Kaizen card is a small form that students can fill out to make suggestions for improvements. When technicians in STUDENTfacturED are not actively making products they can approach improvement projects that have been suggested by Kaizen cards. Suggestions for improvement will always be taken seriously by management, and a technician will never be penalized or retaliated in any way for making a suggestion.

Thinking about the types of waste (DOWNTIME) is where we start. This type of lean oriented thought process can give you ideas on filling out Kaizen cards. Filling out the card is the first step to actually making a good change in the process. The cards help management identify problems that they may not be aware of. Who better to know of problems than the technicians who perform the work?

Any technician that has a suggestion for an improvement fills out the card filling in their information and what they believe the benefit to the company is. Once the problem has been identified, a technician working on an improvement project can explore the suggestion using a systematic approach called the Plan, Do, Check, Act Cycle or PDCA cycle. We will discuss the PDCA cycle next.

In STUDENTfacturED every generation of students improves upon the processes that make the products that we sell. Some students even develop new products that we sell. Everything STUDENTfacturED sells, supports a scholarship fund for future students. The better we do at controlling our costs by improving the process, and reducing waste, the more this fund can grow. We truly believe that students should own this process and improving the process is where that starts. Every semester there are drawings for prizes for students who actively participate in this process by making, or implementing suggestions from the Kaizen cards.

Learning Objectives:

- 3.2 - Recommend an improvement for a manufacturing process using a Kaizen card