Starting tomorrow the gang-of-seven will be blogging on project kaizen. We are sticking to the same five themes day-by-day. You might want to know where those themes came from. (My six partners did!) The first theme is making the case for project kaizen. We decided to start with answering why do kaizen on projects simply because we don't find kaizen today in the project setting. What about the other four themes?

Here's a little background on how I've come to think of the four themes the way I do. Masaaki Imai wrote the book kaizen in 1986 that introduced and popularized kaizen.
Read on…

What Is Kaizen
Kathleen Fasanella

In my continuing series of lean manufacturing, I need to explain the concept of Kaizen. While Kaizen literally means change (kai) and good (zen), Kaizen refers to continuous incremental change as opposed to radical innovation. I just mention the difference as it seems that US culture is enamored of radical new things -which can be buggy in early stages of development- versus a key focus on improving what it is that you already do well. For example -in the apparel industry- it seems there is an almost pathological avoidance to reworking a style that is already selling well. The overwhelming… Read on >>

The Crisis of Kaizen
Kathleen Fasanella

Continuing from yesterday, in this post I'll detail the time and costs of the Kaizen activity pertaining to style 21117. In addition, while everyone desperately wants increases in productivity, you have got to anticipate the potential crisis that a dramatic increase in efficiency can provoke. I'll talk more about that toward the end of this post.
Here I will detail the total amount of time and costs it took to Kaizen this style. You may be surprised to see the costs are much lower than are typically expected but this is not a miscalculation. These costs were typical for redevelopment of… Read on >>