Purpose of Hayai Kaizen™

Kaizen (pronounced ki-zen) is the Japanese word for continuous improvement and hayai means fast. As we use the term, it is a method that strives toward perfection by eliminating waste. It eliminates waste by empowering people with tools and a methodology for uncovering improvement opportunities and making change. Kaizen understands waste to be any activity that is not value-adding from the perspective of the customer. By value-adding, we mean any work done right the first time that materially changes a product or service in ways for which a well informed and reasonable customer is willing to pay.

Benefits

A Kaizen event benefits the business and its customers, employees, and suppliers.

For the business itself, Kaizen:

• produces improved top-line (e.g., revenues and profits) or bottom line (e.g., cost reduction) results depending on the precise improvements made; and
• elevates the abilities of the business's employees, providing the company with a greater capability to grow.

For customers, Kaizen:

• provides products and services that better satisfy their values.

For employees, Kaizen:

• provides an opportunity to remove barriers to job success and satisfaction and the tools with which to do it.

For suppliers, Kaizen:

• can stimulate new challenges and create new opportunities to learn and strengthen their relationships with the business sponsoring the Kaizen events.

How Zambant’s Hayai Kaizen™ Is Performed

Our Hayai Kaizen™ process is accomplished through a set of milestones (see Table 1). Three milestones, performed in sequence, guide us in getting ready to do a Kaizen event. One milestone completes the event, and one milestone follows up to ensure that the changes made in the event produce continued benefits for the stakeholders.

Perform the Hayai Kaizen™ Event

This is the heart of our Hayai Kaizen™ process. Working with a team of Zambant’s skilled and experienced facilitators, it encompasses the activities the team of employees executes during the week the Kaizen event occurs.

In conjunction with our facilitators, the team defines a focus for its improvement efforts, evaluates the target work process by measuring current performance, solves performance issues identified during the evaluation, makes changes to the work process, measures and reports on the results produced.

To learn more call us on 02380 553675