How to do Kaizen: A new path to innovation - Empowering everyone to be a problem solver

Kaizen is a system of continuous improvement: an industrial philosophy that embraces absolutely everyone within the company culture. The goal is in maintaining constant improvement towards productivity, quality, safety, waste reduction, and leadership. A vast continuous flow of tiny constructive ideas will invariably make a huge differences in aggregate. And the process never stops...

Kaizen is the key element in the Japanese miracle taping into the creative abilities of every single person in the organization. When understood and appreciated by management, people will joyfully participate to make their work easier, more interesting and build their skills and capabilities.

Gulfstream Corporation in one of their plants in 2009 obtained 40 implemented ideas per employee, both enriching the working lives of their employees and saving millions of dollars. Autoliv in Ogden, Utah is asking each of their employees, in 2010, to submit 96 ideas.

The Kaizen process is simple. Just ask people to look around their work area and identify small problems, come up with possible solutions, present them to their managers and implement them on their own. It is powerful. It works very well.