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Go to where the action is
The president's Kaizen
Kaizen is the Japanese practice of continuous improvement, and going to Gemba means going to where the action is. At Danaher, presidents from around the world lead what is called a president's Kaizen, and in one week about 2,000 associates were engaged in Kaizens worldwide.
Walking the talk
The CEO led his from one of the company's largest manufacturing facilities. That is walking the talk: if he dedicates a week to it, everyone else in the business knows it has to be part of the culture, part of the DNA, and buys in.
Starting small
Getting started matters more than reading up. A person can read a few books on the Toyota production system or on what Danaher has done, but the journey starts by doing it. Little changes made every day add up, the way nickels and dimes and quarters become dollars, and over 40 years they add up to big money.
How did Kaizen reach Japanese factories?
During World War II the US government's Training Within Industry program taught supervisors to improve how work was done, including job methods and instruction. The program came to Japan during the postwar occupation, and Japanese companies took up its ideas. Toyota combined them with its own approaches, and Masaaki Imai's 1986 book Kaizen brought the word to Western managers. The Japanese word means change for the better.
Why do managers stand at the gemba?
Taiichi Ohno, who built much of the Toyota Production System, is said to have drawn a chalk circle on the factory floor and made new managers stand in it for hours to observe. The exercise taught them to see problems that reports and meetings hide. Gemba is Japanese for the actual place, and lean practitioners treat the shop floor as the source of facts. The chalk circle is known in lean literature as the Ohno circle.
Why do Kaizen events run a single week?
A Kaizen event, sometimes called a Kaizen blitz, usually lasts three to five days. A cross-functional team picks one process, maps how it runs, tests changes, and writes down the new standard before the week ends. Short events keep the team focused on a narrow problem and show results fast. Follow-up checks weeks later confirm whether the changes hold.
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