DIEGO GARCÍA SOLANO
Training Manager
Roca Sanitario S.A.
• Barcelona (Spain)
“To talk about the history of Kaizen is to talk about the history of Japan. If we think about companies like Toyota or Honda, or even the country itself, the first things that come to mind are technology, quality and reliability.
However, it wasn’t always like this: Japan was devastated by the Second World War (1939), which reduced its business and social infrastructure to ashes and severely constrained the availability of natural resources and raw materials. It’s no exaggeration to say that this country of 115 million people was reduced to its labour, culture and way of life. But it was precisely this essence—of discipline, willpower, intelligence and a sense of honour—that was left standing. Its long history spanning millennia and its intelligence were key to allowing the country to rise from the ashes and embark on another struggle—this time far removed from missiles and tanks—that would convert it into one of the world’s most powerful economies in the second half of the 20th century.
Ironically, the United States played a key role in the country’s transformation. Shortly after the US had dropped the atomic bombs, it made a commitment to support Japan in its reconstruction. This resulted in the creation of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in 1949 to develop the concepts of quality in the country. As part of this work, in 1950, JUSE invited Dr William Edwards Deming—a US expert in quality and process control methods and famous for the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) cycle—to participate in a series of seminars. His impact was so great that in 1960, the Deming Prize, whose ceremony is still an annual fixture on Japanese television, was created. Originally focused on Japanese companies, it is now an international award for quality, recognising the contribution of individuals and organisations to Total Quality Management (TQM).
Another figure who was invited to contribute to the JUSE seminars was the Romanian-born Dr Joseph M Juran, an expert in quality management, control methods and continuous improvement. Juran was responsible for the widespread adoption of the famous Pareto graph developed by the economist Vilfredo Pareto, introducing its use as a tool for analysing problems for improving quality. Another figure involved in promoting quality in JUSE was the Japanese chemical engineer, Kaoru Ishikawa. Active in the group since 1949, Ishikawa would go down in history as the inventor of the Seven Basic Tools of Quality and of the diagram that bears his name (also known as the fishbone diagram) and forms the basis of a method for resolving problems based on the analysis of cause and effect.
The concepts developed by these three figures became part of the fabric of Japanese industry, resulting in Kaizen Managment. This new management concept represented a disruptive paradigm shift, which saw companies move from the old principles of control and inspection at the end of processes to an emphasis on continuous improvement for all processes, which forms part of the management and administration of companies, just like strategy. The process changed Japan forever: 30 years after the end of the Second World War, it became the world’s second economic power, after the United States.
A new manufacturing system in Toyota
In 1934, a young Japanese engineer, Kiichiro Toyoda, visited the United States to learn about the car industry. On his return, he used the Toyoda company and textile factory he inherited from his father, together with the help of US engineers, to create the first Japanese car, the model A1. The Japanese engineers at what was then called Toyoda embraced the philosophy behind this new manufacturing strategy, emanating from the work of JUSE. However, it should also be noted that the banks of the time also played a major role in the process, imposing this disruptive paradigm shift. As executors of the funds from the US Martial Plan, the non-repayable finance was conditional on company’s producing only what they sold, which restricted both their stock and labour for production. This was the start of a philosophy of work at Toyoda, now famous as Toyota, which the US imported under the name Lean Manufacturing, in reference to the Japanese concept of “muda” (waste).
Curiously, it was the very concept of Muda from Kaizen that was behind the company’s change of name, since the Japanese word Toyota uses less characters than Toyoda. When we use the word Kaizen today, we are talking about the work of the two Japanese visionaries who fathered its implementation throughout the world. The first is the engineer and consultant Masaaki Imai, founder of the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group, which has supported countless Western businesses in the implementation of the philosophy of Kaizen or continuous improvement since the 1980s.”
“The five pillars of the Kaizen philosophy used in the Toyota Production System arose from traditional Japanese values of pursuing Ikigai (happiness and a purposeful life). Implementing the philosophy in an organisation is also part of this search for a meaningful existence (mission/vision), giving meaning to the other parts and individuals of the organisation in their own personal pursuit of Ikigai. If this basic principle or value is forgotten or an attempt is made to merely apply the system wholly or in part as a tool, it will not work to its full potential. Remember the concept forms part of Japanese culture and is a value that has been passed down through generations. Putting the customer at the heart of everything we do and creating an agile organisation that continuously adapts to its customers’ needs means thinking about making the customer happy and looking after their Ikigai, just as I would like others to look after my own, since in other roles in my life I am a customer too.
For this reason, the question in the system is always the same: would the customer pay for the task that I’m doing? If the answer is no, it is a Muda (waste) and should be eliminated. This can only be done from the Gemba (the place where things take place), as Masaaki Imai explains in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success (McGraw Hill 1986) on the importance of the involvement at the Gemba at all levels of the organisation:
“Management needs to make a major effort to really understand Gemba. Just looking at the financial report doesn’t show the real state of the Company”. “The Kaizen approach allows leaders to visit the front line of the organisation in a structured and deliberated manner to support and empower people to improve their own processes. As a result, all the Gemba activities are aligned with a clear, cascading strategy that is centred on the customer (responsibility of senior management).”
What does Kaizen mean?
Kaizen is a holistic concept for generating change in all areas of the organisation, through every individual, every day. It is not about one-off, disjointed and unsustainable changes. Under the system, leaders and managers of all areas must embody a sense of service in their leadership in order for the system to work and be sustainable. It does not seek transformational change but small sustainable changes in all aspects by everybody, everywhere and every day. Taiichi Onho explained the system:
“Let the flow manage the process not the managers manage the flow.”
As such, the principal centre and fourth pillar of the system is people, all of us. It is people who make continuous changes at their workplace (Gemba) because they are the ones who best understand the tasks. The path forward lies in empowering them to improve their work, not judging them or criticising them but simply treating them professionally and giving them space to develop. Sharing problems and above all solutions with them helps boost their Ikigai, giving meaning to what they do and why they do it. Problems should be shared with facts and data, not opinions or impressions. Objectives, measurements, tests and results should be shared with them in the Gemba and they should be congratulated when they make a change. Created by Taiichi Onho, Kanban is the name of the daily tool that checks we are fulfilling our mission/vision in the workplace, providing guidance and illuminating our path. It’s the fifth and final pillar of the system.
Without a doubt, the history of Kaizen is a history of leadership and transformation. Over the years, it has shown that leadership is not—and must not be—about a small group of people. It needs to encompass everyone on a small scale. Big changes do not exist: change starts with the individual, with the “man in the mirror” (Michael Jackson, 1988).”
Masaaki started out working at the Japanese Productivity Centre in the United States, helping Japanese engineers to become familiar with US industry. Years later, he became president of the Japan Federation of Recruiting and Employment Agency Associations in 1976, consolidating his status as an expert in both Western and Japanese cultures and ways of working. The second figure was Taiichi Ono, a mechanical engineer and colleague of Masaaki, who started out working at the Toyoda textile factory and was transferred to Toyota Motor Corporation in 1942, where he became manager of the plant and one of the fathers of the Toyota Production System (TPS), based on the Kaizen philosophy. This was the system that gave birth to concepts like Kanban, Muda, Poka-Yoke and Gemba.
Masaaki would recount how, in order to explain the concept of Gemba (the place where things happen), Taiichi would personally welcome all new engineers to the factory. He would take them on a tour of the factory, stopping when he reached a circle he had drawn on the floor. He would then excuse himself, explaining he had some urgent business to attend to telling them they could not move from the circle for safety reasons. After a long wait, he would then return and ask them what they had observed in the processes around them and if they had spotted any room for improvement. He used this small experience to impart the importance of two fundamental concepts of the philosophy: first, the concept of Kaizen or continuous improvement itself (kai: change; zen: kindness or improvement); and second, the concept of Gemba (the place where things happen), since changes and improvements are not made in an office but at the site where things happen.
