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Masaaki Imai made the term famous in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. [1] In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement. A kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity.
Hansei (反省, "self-reflection") is a central idea in Japanese culture, meaning to acknowledge one's own mistake and to pledge improvement. This is similar to the German proverb Selbsterkenntnis ist der erste Schritt zur Besserung, where the closest translation to English would be "Insight into oneself is the first step to improvement".
Masaaki Imai (今井 正明, Imai Masaaki), 1930–2023, was a Japanese organizational theorist and management consultant known for his work on quality management, specifically on kaizen. Known as the father of Continuous Improvement (CI), Masaaki Imai has been a pioneer and leader in spreading the kaizen philosophy all over the world. [1 ...
Ganbaru (頑張る, lit. 'stand firm'), also romanized as gambaru, is a ubiquitous Japanese word which roughly means to slog on tenaciously through tough times. [1] The word ganbaru is often translated as "doing one's best", but in practice, it means doing more than one's best. [2] The word emphasizes "working with perseverance" [3] or ...
By ratcheting the process towards this aim with focused muda reduction to achieve each step, the improvements are 'locked in' and become required for the process to function. Without this intent to build a fast, flexible process there is a significant danger that any improvements achieved will not be sustained because they are just desirable ...
Kaikaku can also be initiated when management judges that diminishing improvements from ongoing Kaizen efforts suggest a need for more radical change. Kaikaku projects often result in improvements in the range of 30-50% [3] and a new base level for continued Kaizen. Kaikaku may also be called System Kaizen.
It is an "abbreviation of "Hōkoku" (報告, to report), "Renraku" (連絡, to inform) and "Sōdan" (相談, to consult), and is more memorable as a homonym of hōrensō, the Japanese word for "spinach". The term refers to "getting your hands dirty", to identify or solve immediate problems and leaders are not exempt from this. [1]
Shigeo Shingo: A Study of the Toyota Production System, Productivity Press, 1981 (in Japanese), 1989 (in English), ISBN 0-915299-17-8. Shigeo Shingo: Modern Approaches to Manufacturing Improvement: The Shingo System, Productivity Press, 1990 (in English), ISBN 0-915299-64-X