🌱 Lean Architect · Tyshchenko Lean Academy

Kaizen — a culture of continuous improvement

改善 — “change for the better,” every day

改善
Kaizen — change for the better
A Japanese practice and philosophy of continuously improving production processes
“The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need. This comes from recognition of a problem. If no problem is recognized, there is no recognition of the need for improvement.”
— Masaaki Imai, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success
3 key principles of Kaizen
1
A continuous search for improvement — with the resources you already have
Unlike capital investment in a breakthrough, Kaizen uses what’s already there: people, processes, the team’s know-how
2
Small steps → big results
100 improvements of 1% each add up to one big transformation. But sustaining 100 small ones is easier than sustaining one big one
3
Sustaining performance over the long term
Kaizen → Standard → Kaizen → a higher Standard. A spiral that only moves upward
Kaizen vs. the traditional approach — the difference over time
Performance Time Traditional (invest → decline) Kaizen (step by step) Start Year
Traditional approach
A big investment → a jump up → a slide back to the starting level → the next investment
Kaizen approach
Small daily steps → each one standardized → a continuous upward spiral
A shared culture — from plant manager to operator
Plant manager
Department heads
Shift managers / Supervisors
Operators — THE SOURCE OF IDEAS
Key point: operators see 80% of the problems — they deal with them every day. The plant manager sees only 20%, in reports. Kaizen turns the traditional flow of decisions upside down: bottom-up.
3 levels of Kaizen — from simple suggestions to intensive workshops. Each approach has its own context and depth:
📬
Approach 1 — Individual suggestions
Ongoing · Every day · Every operator
BASIC
Shop-floor staff drop suggestions into an “idea box” or post them on a Kaizen board
Management collects, evaluates, sorts and implements them
The minimum bar: any idea that improves safety, quality or productivity
Success metric: implemented ideas per operator per month. Target: 1–2 ideas per operator per month
👥
Approach 2 — Small-group work
Weekly / monthly · 4–8 people · A specific problem
INTERMEDIATE
Time is set aside once a week or once a month to work on a specific problem
The group uses basic tools: Pareto, Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram, 5 Whys, PDCA
Led by a group leader (a shift manager, supervisor or lead operator)
Focus: productivity trends, quality issues, supply delays
When to start: there’s a recurring problem that one operator can’t solve, but a group can
🚀
Approach 3 — Kaizen events
3–5 days · Cross-functional team · A specific process
INTENSIVE
A focused 3–5 day workshop to improve one specific process
Operators, engineers, managers and the process coordinator take part
Day 1: current-state Value Stream Map (VSM) + identifying waste
Days 2–3: brainstorming + testing solutions right on the spot
Days 4–5: future-state VSM + standardization + action plan
What it takes: buy-in from all sides and active support from the leadership team. The Lean Architect is the facilitator and the guarantor of the result
THE LEAN ARCHITECT’S ROLE IN EACH APPROACH
Suggestions
Keeps the system running → responds to every idea → implements 80%+ within a month
Small groups
Coach and mentor → provides the tools → doesn’t solve it alone — teaches the team to solve it
Kaizen events
Facilitator and Lean coordinator → owns the process and the result → supports the team after the event
Practice: run a Kaizen Idea Bank. Add ideas, classify them by type and move them to “Implemented.”
💡 Total: 0
⏳ Pending: 0
✓ Implemented: 0
Your ideas will appear here · Add the first one ↑
Monthly goal: 10 ideas from the team
0/10
Add ideas to track progress toward the monthly goal
Kaizen — from occupied Japan to a global philosophy
1
1945–1950
The American occupation — the seeds of Kaizen
After World War II, U.S. authorities brought TWI (Training Within Industry) to Japan — a training method built on the idea that if a job can be done, it can be done better. Rebuilding a devastated country short of everything, the Japanese took the idea and turned it into a culture. Deming helped with quality. Japan added the soul — Kaizen.
2
1986
Masaaki Imai’s “Kaizen” opens up the West
Imai publishes Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. It comes as a shock to the West: Japanese companies had no secret technology — they had been improving a little every day for decades. The book became an international bestseller, translated into many languages.
3
Today
From factories to cycling — Kaizen is everywhere
Britain’s Team Sky won the Tour de France with the “aggregation of marginal gains”: a 1% improvement in many small things adds up to a win. The principle has long since moved beyond the factory.