According to the father of the Kaizen philosophy Masaaki Imai, our working life, social life, and even our home life deserve to be continuously improved. The term “Kaizen” is made of two terms- ‘Kai’ means ‘change’ and ‘zen’ means ‘for the better. 

The history of this miraculous technique can be traced back to Toyota Industries after World War II. Later, this technique was made popular by the works of Masaaki Imai who wrote two books on the subject namely- “Kaizen: Japanese spirit of improvement” (1985) and “Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management” (1997). This made this concept eminent in the West. Masaaki Imai also founded the Kaizen Institute in 1985 which provides training and certifications for the same. In India, Tata Motors has successfully implemented the Kaizen technique.

The Core of Kaizen: Pure Improvement for everyone, everywhere and every day

• Knowing one’s customers and their interests to enhance their experience (Know Your Customer)
• Targeting Zero Waste by aiming to create value and eliminating waste (Let it flow)
• Following the action by going where things happen and creating value there( Go to GEMBA)
• Empowering people by an organization or team. The same goals should be set for the teams and they should be provided with the systems and tools to reach them. (Empower People)
• Transparency is the key. Speak with real data. An organization’s performances and improvements must be tangible and visible. (Be transparent)

How to do it?

• Discovering the potential for improvement
  
• Evaluating the existing methods 
  
• Generate original ideas
  
• Development of implementation plan
  
• Implementing the plan
  
• Evaluating the new method

PDCA: The golden cycle for Kaizen

The PDCA cycle is a great complementary technique for enhancing the achievements of implementing Kaizen-

• Plan– Planning needs to be done to establish the goals and counter steps. For planning, both the future endeavors and the past performance of the organization are taken into consideration. 
• Do- This step involves implementing the measures and countermeasures deliberated above.
• Check- This step is to measure the achievements or the effectiveness of the measures taken in the preceding procedures. This also helps in identifying the gaps between the actual and the expected outcomes. 
• Act- In this procedure, analysis is done of the causes of the gaps identified. This stage also deliberates necessary actions to improve the changes. 

Benefits of implementing Kaizen:

1. Waste Reduction- Kaizen plays a key role in waste reduction and elimination of overproduction. This, in turn, leads to significant improvement in the quality of the products, saves time, and reduces efforts in doing unnecessary activities. Thus, the organization is successfully able to transform its potential losses into profits. Another Japanese technique that helps in waste reduction while implementing Kaizen is Muda, which means waste and refers to activities that do not add value to the organization. Rather such wastes increase cost and prolong the time taken to complete important tasks at hand. 
   
2. Customer Satisfaction- Knowing your customers and their issues help the organization know what needs to be improvised. The necessary steps are then taken and the PDCA cycle can be used to do so. High customer satisfaction can also be attributed to the reduced prices and improved quality of the products. 
   
3. Improved Productivity-Elimination of waste while implementing Kaizen leads to enhanced productivity. While Kaizen is not an overnight process, it does facilitate the environment that allows for continuous improvement. It also helps in the standardization of products.
   
4. Improved Communication-Implementation of Kaizen leads to good communication between the management and the employees. Many organizations that have implemented this technique have observed that employees begin to feel empowered and confident to talk to their management. Moreover, the management also becomes more interactive to know and implement the changes required.
   
5. Better Safety– Safety is ensured with this technique which focuses on clean up and organization of the workplace. This provides a better control mechanism to the employees and they are also encouraged to make suggestions regarding their safety. This helps in mitigating accidents and injuries.
   
6. Improved teamwork- Kaizen is an improvement-oriented approach with its foundational pillar being teamwork. It builds team spirit as the employees are required to work inside and outside their respective departments. This also enables employees from various departments to come together and solve their problems by cooperating.

Leadership Skills- In the Kaizen model, it is desirable for every time involved to have a leader. This motivates the employees to improve themselves, take up the role of a leader, and emerge as a winner. 

Disadvantages of Kaizen

1. Employee Discomfort: One major disadvantage observed by the organizations that implemented this technique is the discomfort of employees to the change. The employees become accustomed and comfortable to the old ways of functioning and hence find it difficult to be productive with changes introduced as a result of the implementation of Kaizen. 
   
2. Hence, the major challenge lies in involving the employees and making it easier for them to adapt to the changes. The transformation was done for cost reduction and waste elimination would go waste if the employees are unhappy with it and fail to adopt it.
    
3. Training requirement – Since Kaizen is both a philosophy and an action plan, proper implantation of its methodology requires training staff and management to understand the same. This implies culling out time out of daily tasks by the employees to undergo the training. This may or may not interest them and they may find it tedious to implement a concept they are unfamiliar with. Moreover, such pieces of training increase the cost of the organization. 
   
4. Difficulty with existing systems- The organization may realize that it is difficult to alter the entire management system of a business. It may be easier to implement in organizations that do not have existing management systems.