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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.
The term "continual improvement", not "continuous improvement", is used in ISO 14000, and is understood to refer to an ongoing series of small or large-scale improvements which are each done discretely, i.e. in a step-wise fashion. Several differences exist between the CIP concept as it is applied in quality management and environmental management.
Kaizen refers to a philosophy or practices that focus upon Continuous Improvement regardless of the type of business or process. Masaaki Imai acknowledged that kaizen starts with the detection of needs and problem definition: "The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need. This comes from the recognition of a problem.
The principles of the Toyota Way are divided into the two broad categories of continuous improvement and respect for human resources. [7] [8] [9] The standards for constant improvement include directives to set up a long-term vision, to engage in a step-by-step approach to challenges, to search for the root causes of problems, and to engage in ongoing innovation.
The Shogakukan Dictionary's original definition of Kaizen is translated as “The act of making bad points better”. In English, the more popular definition of Kaizen is “Change for Better.” Many believe that the meaning of Kaizen is “continuous improvement,” but Kaizen is a result of continuous improvement. It exists at the employee ...
Kaizen – Kaizen means to change for the good of all and is based on the philosophy of improvement, without regard to its size, type or duration. Kaizen activity is often focused on rapid process improvement events (called kaizen events) that bring together a cross-functional team for 3–5 days to study a specific process followed by ...
Example of a worksheet for structured problem solving and continuous improvement. A3 problem solving is a structured problem-solving and continuous-improvement approach, first employed at Toyota and typically used by lean manufacturing practitioners. [1] It provides a simple and strict procedure that guides problem solving by workers.
ISO 15504-4: 2005 — information technology — process assessment — Part 4: Guidance on use for process improvement and process capability determination. QFD — quality function deployment, also known as the house of quality approach. Kaizen — 改善, Japanese for change for the better; the common English term is continuous improvement.