KAIZEN™ is a Japanese word for “Change for the better” or it is also referred to as “Continuous Improvement”. So it is a journey and not a destination, it is a mindset as opposed to being a specific tool. It is a culture that needs to changed & adopted by the organizations. It uses personal creativity and ingenuity to identify problems and then develop and implement ideas to solve those problems. KAIZEN™ philosophy says that everything can be improved and everything can perform better or more efficiently. It helps to identify 3 MU’s – muda (wastes), Mura (variation/ inconsistency) and Muri (strain/ burden on people & machines).
KAIZEN™ is the practice of continuous improvement. KAIZEN™ was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imai in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986. Today KAIZEN™ is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization’s long-term competitive strategy. KAIZEN™ is continuous improvement that is based on certain guiding principles:
       Good processes bring good results
       Go see for yourself to grasp the current situation
       Speak with data, manage by facts
       Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems
       Work as a team
       KAIZEN™ is everybody’s business
       And much more!
One of the most notable features of KAIZEN™ is that big results come from many small changes accumulated over time. However this has been misunderstood to mean that KAIZEN™ equals small changes. In fact, KAIZEN™ means everyone involved in making improvements. While the majority of changes may be small, the greatest impact may be kaizens that are led by senior management as transformational projects, or by cross-functional teams as KAIZEN™ events.