“A real manager should pretend that he doesn’t know how to achieve a goal,” - Sony director Akio Morita

In a changing world where resources are running out and people's imaginations are growing, you need to create amazing things with minimal energy costs, while guessing exactly what the world wants tomorrow. The essence of the kaizen concept is improvement or improvement. The word “kaizen” consists of two hieroglyphs - “change” and “good.” Change for the better, change for the better. And it is necessary to change immediately, and a small small change is better than a delayed improvement. Kaizen is a style or, if you like, a management philosophy. It follows 2 conclusions:

1. You cannot get a kaizen certificate, for example, you can get an ISO9000 certificate. However, you can expect to receive certain awards, such as the Deming Prize, which in Japan is awarded for achievements in the organization of quality control.
2. Kaizen primarily sets the rules of behavior and human relations in the enterprise. Of course, Kaizen has a tremendous experience in collecting statistics, analyzing the results of work, and organizing supplies. The accumulated experience is necessarily standardized and thus becomes available for reproduction in other enterprises. But copying Japanese standards in the rest of the world will not mean working in the spirit of “kaizen”.

Special attention deserves the Japanese attitude to change. Most companies practice a gradual approach to change. The Chinese curse “To live in an era of change” implies change as a sudden and major event. Kaizen tries to anticipate such events through a gradual approach, without jerks. From the point of view of kaizen, the development of the system through major explosive changes or innovations lies in degradation. In fact, no constancy does not exist by itself, it is necessary to make daily efforts to maintain it. Otherwise, the decline is inevitable! Despite the fact that innovations can change the standard of achievable indicators, their level will decrease if you do not engage in constant revision and improvement of the new standard. Innovation is a one-step act, whereas kaizen is a permanent job with a cumulative effect.

In the kaizen concept, priority is given to manufacturing processes. The result is important, but the process of achieving it means no less. Imperfect processes cannot lead to a goal. Kaizen sets a goal for the enterprise to “fit into the market” (market-in) by improving the processes at the enterprise, and not to “sell the product” (product-out). The main goal of kaizen is to improve the quality of the enterprise’s work through the so-called TQC (total quality control).
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TQC is ...

Quality is all that can be improved. -Masaaki Imai

“Total quality” for a Japanese company means total quality in everything. Clean workplaces, occupational safety, ethics of communication, quality of work tools. Without all these components, product quality is impossible. With inimitable zeal, Japanese workers and employees perfected the surrounding space, of which the product manufactured by their firm is a part.

Another reflection of the concept of "total quality" we find in the fact that in the process of improving the quality of all involved employees of the company. Quality circles in the workplace, universal training at work, in which even suppliers of related products are involved. The organization of quality control includes: policy; organization and its management; education and knowledge dissemination; the collection, dissemination and use of quality information; analysis; standardization; control; quality assurance; results; planning for the future.

So that the reader can feel what TQC is in Japan, I’ll give you a list of Pentel TQC slogans (stationery production), which I borrowed from the program book “Kaizen is the key to the success of Japanese companies” by Masaaki Imai:

1. Adhere to the concept of “market orientation” (Customer first. The one who performs the next technological operation is your customer. If you are a supporter of the concept of “quickly sell”, then the name of our company will soon disappear even from the phone book)
2. Always be attentive to emerging issues (Where there are no problems, improvement is impossible)
3. To manage is to begin with planning and compare the plan with the result. (Let's turn the PDCA wheel and change our approach to work)
4. Mountains of treasure are rising at every turn (Chronic problems can teach you more than those that arise suddenly)
5. Manage the process by results (Correction and fitting - problems arising from management omissions. Solving these problems is no longer management, but manipulation)
6. Analyze what is happening in the enterprise and act on the basis of facts (Draw conclusions based on reliable facts. Do not rely on intuition or inner voice)
7. Be attentive to deviations from the standard (It is more important to establish deviations than to increase the average)
8. Separate observation objects into groups before observation (Classification helps for better understanding)
9. Begin self-improvement (teach yourself to define the questions for which you are personally responsible, unlike those for which others are responsible, and start with your own tasks)
10. Eliminate the main cause and prevent relapses (Do not confuse the cause of the problem with its manifestations)
11. Embed quality in the process as early as possible (Quality must be embedded in the process, verification does not create quality)
12. Never forget about standardization (We need methods to consolidate the results achieved)
13. Always remember to deploy horizontally (Personal experience should be shared with the whole company)
14. The introduction of TQC applies to all (Pleasant and meaningful work in the workshop begins with an active “quality circle” that promotes mutual learning and self-development)

It is obvious that such requirements can be fulfilled only if all the people employed in production work hard. Therefore, in kaizen, key attention is paid to the quality of employees.

Quality control deals with the quality of people

Japanese corporations practice educating whole and active workers in their environment. A strict service hierarchy and special historical and cultural traditions, which we will discuss separately, contribute to education. It is not accepted that it is inconceivable for a Japanese hired worker to come home from work on time to terminate an employment contract, it is exceptional that the employee does not extend the contract, even if the corporation offered him work on less favorable terms. There are practically no middle and top managers on the labor market, each corporation cultivates managers in its own greenhouses corporate culture.

The main feature of decision making in Japan is the principle of “consensus”. The standard procedure for preparing, discussing and approving management decisions is called “rings”. The “ringi” procedure is that the top management only outlines the problem, and its specific development and putting forward proposals for its solution are delegated to the “lower ranks”. In this procedure, the principles of “management from below”, “consensus” are clearly traced. If you like, it can be called “liberalism in Japanese.” In a tough situation of ubiquitous discipline, in the “father-son” behavior model between managers and subordinates in the company, such methods as “rings” or “proposal supply system” work like a psychological trick. At the time of decision-making, a corporate employee understands what he plowed for years, being moved from place to place, feels his involvement in the great affairs of the company. At such moments he is happy. How, perhaps, the inventor of the new production system, Kanban, was probably happy!

Traditional Kanban

Kanban is a production system invented at Toyota’s factories in 1952. She was invented by the engineer Tahiti Ono, who claimed that this system was born out of the need to create small lots of cars of various models (as opposed to mass production of large quantities of products). Tahiti Ono struggled with production costs. After analyzing the situation, he compiled a list of reasons:

1. Overproduction
2. Machine time loss
3. Losses in transit
4. Processing losses
5. Cash loss
6. Losses due to unnecessary movements
7. Losses due to defective parts

The root of evil turned out to be in overproduction and, in order to fight the evil of Tahiti, Ono proposed the concept “just in time”. This concept requires that a strictly specified number of blanks be submitted at each time point. This overturned the order of assembly work, because usually the details were transferred further along the production chain as they become ready. Now, the one who carried out the next operation had to independently request the next batch of the necessary details. This significantly reduced inventory. Daily production schedules are made only for the main assembly line. For workshops and sites servicing the main conveyor, production schedules are not drawn up (they only establish indicative monthly production volumes) “Kanban” is a tag that is used in this system as a communication tool. It is attached to each box with blanks transferred to the assembly line. A short, but understandable and comprehensive description of the kanban process will be found on Wikipedia, in the article “Kanban”, the constant use of the “just-in-time” philosophy allows revealing defects that have not yet been discovered. Stocks are very well adapted to conceal defects. Only when reducing stocks can you see the problem. This is very similar to how a high level of water hides underwater reefs.

What is the author silent

Kaizen is what Japanese business breathes. In a short article you can not tell everything. I advise the interested reader to read the book “Kaizen - the key to the success of Japanese companies” Masaaki Imai. Despite the rather aggressive rhetoric that is characteristic of all “evangelists”, this book remains the main source of information that can be pushed off for further study. The reward system, the dignity system, statistical methods of fixing the result, the Deming wheel PDCA (“plan” - “act” - “check” - “influence”), cross-functional management are interesting topics that the author deliberately left behind.

Kaizen, like everything else in the world, has its down side, a consequence of Japanese cultural traditions. In a kaizen system, it is very difficult to maintain one’s personality. This is described in paints in Amelie Nothomb's autobiographical story “Fear and Awe” about experience in a Japanese company. Both the strengths and weaknesses of kaizen come from the deep cultural traditions that we will look at in the next series. To finish this chapter, I would like to say the words of Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann, director of Sterlin University of Japan: “Japan cannot be taken as a model that can be copied. It should be used as a mirror in which you need to consider your own strengths and weaknesses. ”