For most American management
styled companies, Kaizen involves and requires a significant change in the
corporate culture. This is the key. The
attitudes of employees - from top management down to new hires will need to
change. Kaizen must be the way of life that become something all employees do
as a routine because they wish to, and because they know it is good for them as
well as the company. It cannot be management dictated.
If management isn't ready to lead
by themselves, Kaizen will not get kicked off the ground and hence direct
management involvement is too critical. For example, a manager spending a week
on the shop floor, working with employees to help and encourage them to develop
suggestions will certainly boost the morale of employees and help them overcome
the shyness or lethargies. That manager should also ensure employees see their
suggestions acted on--immediately. Suggestions should not be kept for next
month or next week—but implemented today. In most of the cases, a suggestion
submitted in the morning can be implemented that afternoon, or sooner to instil
a sense of urgency among all.
Following are a few important
steps among all -
·
Employee training and communication is critical in
the first phase of implementation. Train employees in using Kaizen tools such
as 5S, Kanban, and Line Balancing.
·
Keep employees informed about what happens with
their kaizen or raw suggestions. The
inability of the response to the suggestions in a clear yes or no is the best
policy. In case of “No” also people are not disheartened but in case of no
communication, they are confused about the suggestion itself & think
whether they did right thing to give a suggestion?
·
To get Kaizen started it can be helpful
initially to bring in outside experts. They can work in your facility
identifying problems that those close to the work may not see. This serves as a
"seed" allowing employees to see how Kaizen works and to experience
the benefits of Kaizen.
·
A significant obsticle to Kaizen in many
corporations is that problems are seen as negatives. We don't like problems.
Someone who is associated with a problem is likely to be negatively impacted (a
lower raise, missed promotion, or even fired). In Kaizen problems are
opportunities to improve. With Kaizen we want to find, report and fix problems.
Kaizen encourages and rewards the identification of problems by all employees.
·
To encourage the submission of suggestions, a
part of each supervisor's evaluation should be based on the number of
suggestions submitted by those they supervise. Don't evaluate employees on the
number of suggestions they submit, evaluate your supervisors and managers and how
well they are doing at getting those who work for them to actively participate
in Kaizen.
·
Managers should develop methods to help create
suggestions and increase the number of suggestions. For example, set up teams
or five to 12 people to evaluate work areas, processes, quality, productivity,
and equipment availability/reliability. The team then makes suggestions for
improvements, and they may even implement those improvements.
·
Keep in mind that Kaizen is about action. Taking
action to generate suggestions, and taking action to implement those
suggestions immediately.