Kaizen Events: Today’s Processes and Services Aren’t So Easily Changed in a Week

This is the last in my series of PIPs where I examine tools and techniques which were relevant and effective for process improvement in the past.  The business world where we earn our living has changed and some tools, such as Kaizen Events, can be very difficult to implement in many processes and services in organizations today.

A Kaizen (aka Rapid Improvement) Event is conceptually a very potent tool.  The idea is to gather a cross functional team for a tightly focused, short duration (such as a week) effort facilitated by a lean expert.  The team has full authority to tear apart a process or processes, develop solutions, and implement the changes during that timeframe.  Results are immediate.

For small, single-location, non-automated, non-regulated processes or services, this tool can still be very effective.  Unfortunately most organizations have few if any of those processes or services left.  Today we have globally structured, multiple-location, regulated, and automated processes or services which cannot be changed without a focus on impact to other areas or great difficulty.

Global supply chains and outsourced services leverage their resources across many customers and cannot quickly make the changes the team seeks.  Many others have significant automation and IT intensive tools for their processes or services where support groups need to investigate how to make those changes.  Other industries have government or certifying ‘best practices’ which you would be foolish to change without investigation and approval.

Kaizen Events are powerful under proper circumstances and by all means use them if you can implement the findings quickly.   It’s a challenge to do nowadays though.  The Japanese definition of Kaizen refers to incremental improvement which is how it has to work in many of our processes or services today.