- Kaizen is a process of continuous improvement in a company that involves encouraging employees to contribute ideas to improve the company. This method reduces costs, improves the quality of products or services and increases employee commitment.
- According to the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) model, improvement actions must be planned, executed, the results checked and applied.
- When analyzing a company’s problems, it is important to involve as many people from different departments as possible, as each employee can see the problem from a different angle and help identify the deeper causes of the problem.
- Using tools such as Ishikawa and Pareto diagrams can help to effectively identify and eliminate the root causes of problems in a company.
- Methods such as FMEA allow potential defects to be analysed and assessed even before production begins, allowing preventive or defect reduction measures to be adopted.
- Lean management is about eliminating waste and focusing on adding value for the customer by streamlining production, logistics and quality control processes.
- The use of the Just-In-Time strategy and the Kanban system helps to reduce inventories and increase production flexibility, which benefits the company despite incurring additional costs due to the greater frequency of deliveries.
What does a company’s success depend on?
Most people will probably answer this question by pointing to the right strategy, innovation and the ability to appeal to consumer tastes. Of course, this is true, but often, when companies with a similar profile compete with each other, the winner is the one that is able to operate more efficiently, thus producing better products at a lower price. How can you achieve quality and cost advantages at phone number list the same time? By applying techniques that lead to continuous product improvement and the elimination of defects and waste. Let’s look at ten methods that will improve your company.
1. Kaizen
Also known as the “small steps method,” Kaizen is the process of continuous improvement the golden age of newsletters: why subscribing to thematic newsletters is back in fashion in a company. In the article “Kaizen, or how to involve employees in company improvement,” we describe the concept in more detail and outline some of the techniques involved. In a nutshell, it involves encouraging employees to powder data contribute ideas for improving the company.
Kaizen , through the progressive improvement of all aspects of the company’s operations, aims to achieve the following objectives:
- reduce the time required to complete the work process and improve quality;
- technical adaptation of system components;
- create evaluation and reward criteria;
- cost reduction;
- improve the ergonomics of workplaces.
The creator of this model
William Deming, was an American statistician with a background in quality management who did consulting work for Japanese companies after the war. Among other things, his concepts influenced Kaizen. He advocated a philosophy of continuous improvement and better communication between management and employees. The development of the acronym (Plan-Do-Check-Act) can be translated as “Plan-Do-Check-Act” and represents a four-step process for implementing change in a flexible way.
The first stage, which is planning , is about finding out the cause of the problem we are facing. At this point, it is worth remembering one of the principles of Kaizen, that of the “5 whys”. We should try to find out what is most responsible for the situation by “asking why” five times. Of course, it is not always enough to ask “why”, so in the following paragraphs I will describe diagrams to break down the problems and find the most crucial ones. By knowing the cause of the problem, we can obtain any information that can help us solve it and move on to the next step.
The next step is to try to solve the problem .
As we know, Kaizen is about taking small steps, so to start with we don’t turn the whole company upside down, but simply test the idea on a small scale. In this case, “execute” means “test”, and full implementation only takes place in the last phase of the cycle. This approach will be better because our ideas can sometimes go wrong. Being cautious gives us some flexibility and allows us to adapt solutions to reality.
Once we have tested our solution, it is time for the third stage, which is the analysis of its effects . It allows us to find out the validity of the idea and its effectiveness. Of course, the result of a test does not have to be judged by a zero to one system. Even if the solution is good enough to be introduced in its entirety, the “test period” allows us to learn about its imperfections and improve them. The “test” should not be based solely on control, but on the study of the results of the experiment carried out.
The final phase is the implementation of a revised solution . The three previous stages give us the assurance that the results will be satisfactory. Of course, this is not the end of the process, because Kaizen, with which the PDCA model is closely associated, is a continuous improvement, the cycle closes and starts again; once the process is complete, we must look for other areas that we can improve. The repetition of these four steps brings the company closer to excellence.
Ishikawa Diagram
The tool, developed by a professor at the University of Tokyo , is used for cause-effect analysis and is also called a “fishbone diagram.” It involves writing an effect, usually a failure, instead of the “head,” and placing the overall causes in a branching bone-shaped diagram. Following the aforementioned “5 whys” principle, we can add the factors that influenced each cause. We can repeat this process until our analysis is sufficiently detailed. It is important to involve as many people as possible from different departments in the company, otherwise the analysis will not be complete. Employees with different experience will be able to look at the problem from a different angle, so the chance of identifying the deeper causes will be greatly increased.
The principle of constructing a diagram is best demonstrated with an example. Suppose a problem in the company is ineffective and lengthy meetings, and we want to find out why this happens.
There are several advantages to using such an analysis. Firstly, the involvement of a team made up of staff from different departments and levels gives us the confidence to consider all possible causes of the problem. Secondly, the nature of the diagram emphasizes the search for “sub-causes” – factors that have not directly contributed to our failure, but which must be eliminated so that the situation does not recur in the future. In addition, the delineation of effects and causes in graphic form is accessible and provides a starting point for listing those factors whose influence on the final result was greatest.
Pareto Diagram
The Pareto principle states that 20% factors generate 80% effects. With a complete list of the reasons for meeting failures from an Ishikawa diagram, we could select those whose negative impact is greatest and only by eliminating them would we obtain satisfactory results. The effectiveness of meetings is difficult to quantify, but if we were to measure, for example, the number of individual causes of complaints, we could build a Pareto diagram on this basis. It boils down to a bar chart showing the frequency of individual observations and allows us to see which causes of a problem occur most frequently. Obviously, eliminating them first will give the best result. Returning to our example of meetings, one solution would be to survey employees about the reasons for their dissatisfaction with meetings. Identifying the key factors allows us to act more precisely and therefore more effectively.