ABSTRACT
Before your company can dedicate itself to making changes on the production floor through an established kaizen program, it is important to have an understanding of kaizen and kaizen events.
Kaizen is a Japanese word that means continuous improvement. This philosophy of continual improvement emphasizes the importance of involving employees at every level of the organization. This philosophy assumes that our everyday life should focus on constant improvement efforts. This is so natural and obvious to many world-class organizations that they sometimes forget they possess it. Kaizen is intended to be integrated into the normal day-to-day activities with the focus on eliminating waste, creating standards, and having a clean, organized workplace. Improvements made through kaizen are generally small and subtle; however, their results over time can be large and long lasting. I feel that it has been a major contributor to the economic and competitive success of the companies I have helped.
