What is a Kaizen Event

Just what is a Kaizen Event; a kaizen event is an improvement team session focused on improving a specific area or facet of your business. Typically a Kaizen event will last from 3 or 4 days to 3 or 4 months, and will have a dedicated team of people working towards a common goal.

These kaizen events are looking to deliver a breakthrough in performance within a very short space of time and frequently achieve this (I can’t recall any real failures.)

A Kaizen event is about getting things done and getting them done immediately, not about making weeks of analysis and then more weeks of choosing options, better to be 80% right today than 100% right in six months! As an outspoken CEO once told us JFDI – “Just F (insert your own version) Do IT!!!)

Lean manufacturing and kaizen events in particular are about taking action, it is typical to be moving whole factory floors around by the third day of a kaizen event (or sooner). You will not always be right and at times have to make adjustments at a later date, but it far better to make some improvement and then continue to improve it over time than do nothing for fear of not getting it completely right on the first attempt!

Kaizen events typically are very rapid improvement methods, they can often give 20% to 100% improvements in efficiencies even in areas in which other improvements have been implemented. The focus of your event can however be based on any aspect of your business that you wish to improve; speed of order processing, lead time reduction, supplier relationships to the whole value stream.

The important thing with any event is to be clear what improvement it is that you are looking for before you start, after all, how will you know if you have been successful if you have no goal!

Kaizen events are typically one off events with teams formed specifically for the purpose of the improvements required. The team being disbanded and sent off to their “normal” working day after the event is finished.

The problem with this is that they do not instill a culture of continuing improvement, people wait for the next event before improvements can be made. It also leads to slippage in the improvements, as when the team is no longer there people begin to revert to old methods as things start to go wrong and as things such as customer demand change.

Without a culture of continuous improvement being already in place with established kaizen teams it is hard to maintain the full gains achieved through kaizen events. These events should be held frequently across your organization in addition to your other kaizen efforts.

Kaizen blitz

The typical kaizen event is the Kaizen blitz or Kaikaku, this is the most well known and most effective way of producing immediate and obvious gains within any environment, service or manufacturing. Led by a facilitator (often an external consultant) a team is formed and over the period of week concentrates on making improvements in a specific area.

Significant pre-planning is required to be conducted before implementation of the Kaizen Blitz or you will hit problems during the actual blitz. It is down to the team to make the analysis and suggest improvements based around the many lean manufacturing tools and principles.

Typically a Kaizen Blitz concentrates on the removal of the seven wastes and an initial kaizen blitz within an area can be very much like an initial 5S implementation with the team looking at work cell design and layout.

Value Stream Flow Kaizen.

This type of event starts by mapping the value stream using Value Stream Mapping tools either across the whole of the organization or through a specific portion. The aim of this type of kaizen event is to create a future state map for the value stream which may include reorganization within the company. These events can be quite an eye opener for the company!

Supply Chain Kaizen Events

Much like a flow kaizen event this is very much focused on creating a value stream map of your supply chain with the cooperation and involvement of your key suppliers. The aim being to once again create a future state map to make improvements to your supply chain for both your and your suppliers benefits.

There are a number of places you can go to for help with your kaizen events such as the kaizen institute or other lean manufacturing consultants. However you should be aware that you get what you pay for, the more experienced and more effective consultants are going to charge a lot more than the recently unemployed lacking in experience new consultant!

You could also approach government bodies and support groups such as the manufacturing advisory service in the UK who run many kaizen events every week, events that are subsidised by the taxpayer so will cost you much less. Other business support groups and even universities and colleges are also worth approaching; such as the institute for manufacturing at Cambridge University.

You could also look at other information available here online; lean manufacturing tools can give you an overview of the many tools available and point you at more in depth information as can the article on quality tools for continuous improvemet and problem solving.

If you have any questions or comments regarding running a kaizen event or are still unsure about what is a Kaizen event or any other questions about lean manufacturing in general please use the space below.