Kaizen works by continual incremental changes that reduce waste, and eliminating work processes that are overly difficult in the workplace. As a lean practice, Kaizen succeeds when all employees look for areas to improve and provide suggestions based on their observations and experience. From the beginning, it must be clear that all suggestions are welcome and that there will be no negative consequences for participating. Instead, employees are rewarded for changes that improve the workplace. Workers become more confident and invested in improving the company. They become leaders that continually look for areas that can be improved. Some companies will hold events called a Kaizen blitz where all workers take take time during the event to examine the areas that they work in for small areas to improve. All of these small changes add up to a big reduction of waste within the company.

Using Kaizen will result in many benefits. Some of the expected benefits will be:

- Reduction in waste
- Increased productivity
- Improved quality
- Better safety
- Lower costs
- Improved customer satisfaction

Learning Objectives:

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