Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Swati Chopra
As the dapper Japanese rises from his chair, there is pin-drop silence in the
conference hall. The corporate types around me regard him with eyes glazed with
adulation. Like them, I expect the august founder of Kaizen, a management
philosophy, to say something profound. Instead, he recounts a ridiculously funny
story. He waits for the guffaws to die down before pointing out gently: "To adopt
Kaizen means to be ever willing to change, for if you don't, you surrender yourself
and your market to those who do."
That's fairly simple, only that we need Masaaki Imai to bring that home to us. For
almost two decades now, he has been in the business of making slothful industries
around the world commit to 'continuous improvement through change'. Or, in short,
to Kaizen.
In his Kaizen: the Key to Japan's Competitive Success published in 1986 that
introduced Kaizen to the Western corporate world, Masaaki Imai defined it as: "a
means of continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working
life. At the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement involving everyone—
managers and workers alike. The Kaizen business strategy involves everyone in an
organization working together to make improvements without large capital
investments."
The operative phrase here is 'without large capital investments'. Instead of sinking
more money in buying machinery or running them for a longer duration, Kaizen
veers an organization towards paying attention to small but significant details.
Managers are encouraged to improve the efficiency of existing infrastructure instead
of investing in more of the same. "And that," says Imai, "can happen only if you are
familiar with every inch of your gemba (workplace)".
The emphasis on the gemba often leads to a misconception that Kaizen is relevant
only for lower-rung employees. Rather, it is a strategy that begins and ends with
people. It requires the leadership to ensure sustained improvement to continuously
improve the company's ability to meet expectations of high quality, low cost products
and on-time delivery.
Listening to Imai, I could not help but notice the relevance of Kaizen in areas of life
other than the workplace. You merely need to assume your home/relationship to be
the gemba. Also, as Imai says, and Heraclitus said before him, nothing is permanent
but change. Each individual deserves to improve for the better continually. An ancient
Japanese saying expresses similar sentiments: "If a man has not been seen for three
days, his friends should take a good look at him to see what changes have befallen
him."
So why not work to make that change, whether at work or at home, a positive one?
Masaaki Imai, the founder of Kaizen was in India recently. Excerpts from an
interview with him.
Your next step was to introduce 'Gembakaizen'. Why this emphasis on the
gemba (workplace)?
The workplace is viewed with a great deal of reverence in Japan. The place where
your product is being manufactured is sacred. It is common, for instance, to call a
manager in Japan and be informed by his secretary that he is "in gemba" and
therefore cannot be disturbed. It is almost as if he is in meditation or in the temple!
In India, as indeed in many Western firms, managers treat the gemba as lowly and fit
only for lower level employees. So they sit in their fancy cabins and make decisions
based on what I would call 'fabricated data'. I tell them to visit the gemba for a more
hands-on experience.
You speak about Kaizen being people-centric. How do you deal with the
hierarchy that exists in every organization?
We deal with the hierarchy by eliminating it! Everybody is involved in the process of
change. There is a definite shift towards more equality in organizations that employ
Kaizen. A Mumbai-based company in India that had adopted Kaizen actually fixed a
particular time everyday when for half an hour, everyone from senior managers to the
lower staff collectively cleaned the gemba.