The use of this kaizen strategy has been associated with the economic recovery of Japan right after World War II, and for their continued success in car manufacturing, electronics and other consumer goods.
What is remarkable is that the kaizen was originally thought up by Americans. Right after World War II, the Occupation forces encouraged American managers to move to Japan and help with the rebuilding of the economy. One of those managers was Edwards Deming. In 1950 he started working with local Japanese manufacturers. Deming’s approach was to emphasize the continuous improvement, later known as kaizen.
I am old enough to remember all of the poor quality American cars in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of them got lousy gas mileage, did not have adequate bumpers, had no way to defrost the back window, and typically only lasted about 90,000 miles. Ford Motor Company, with the “exploding” Pinto is probably the best-known example of this era of poor design. It took many years for this to change, and it was largely because Ford began consulting with Deming in the late 1980s. Up until this time there was very little “continuous improvement” of American automobiles except for body design changes.
According to Ira Glass in This American Life, GM plants often had hundreds of poorly assembled cars, cars that came off the line with the wrong parts, and cars that needed to be repaired before they could be shipped out to the dealers.
Kaizen is a management style and philosophy that continues to be used today by Toyota and other Japanese manufacturers. Instead of waiting for problems to happen, Toyota employees are expected to continually seek out improvements in quality and efficiency. If factory workers see a potential problem, they immediately start looking for a solution instead of letting that glitch expand as the production continues.
One of the ways to embrace kaizen is to encourage the penalty-free exchange of ideas that often encourage innovation. Under the Toyota system, when an employee makes a suggestion that saves money, he or she gets a bonus. Both the management and staff are expected to be constantly looking for ways to improve the production process.
One way to damage the kaizen philosophy is by constantly threatening workers with being terminated. Employees who are afraid of being fired will be more reluctant to offer suggestions or report errors in the assembly process.
If you look around many Japanese plants you can see the result of all those improvements. They often have innovations such as portable tool racks that travel along with the car and the worker, and carry the assembly tools and parts they will need.
For American manufacturers to regain the competitive edge, they should establish core values that embrace kaizen, or something similar. The continuous improvement culture has the potential of developing pride among workers and could potentially be adapted to both our manufacturing and service sectors.
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