1. Introduction
Over time, various factors shape the culture, consciousness and spirit of the peoples. An enormous amount of political, historical, climatic, geographic, religious, economic, institutional, cultural, psychological, anthropological and sociological circumstances are intertwined to be both cause and effect of the nature of each society.
The methods, instruments, tools and business management systems are the product of various social groups, they are generated in them and are destined for them. Thus we have throughout the world various ways of approaching the economic, political and administrative management, both of the States, of companies or other types of organizations. In turn, this different way of managing changes over time in the face of changes in the environment, changes to which not all societies are subject in the same way.
This different form of evolution is not only characteristic of the different societies, but the same thing happens both with smaller groups such as companies, and the family, as well as with individuals.
It follows that systems that produced in a certain type of company or society give excellent results, may not give equal results in companies or societies that have other socio-cultural characteristics.
Many methodologies or administration systems that tried to impose or transplant themselves in certain organizations failed to advance and if they did so it was with very poor results or without meeting the expectations placed on them.
The serious mistake of many specialists is to consider that the world is uniform, that everywhere one thinks and feels the same way. In such a way that trying to implant political, economic, cultural, educational and administrative ideas in different societies and in some cases totally different from those in which they were generated, they only obtained disastrous results.
Now, there are those individuals who, starting from the aforementioned, refuse to systematically face change, either due to obstinacy, fear of change, or loss of privileges. In such a situation they say: "It will not work here, because things are different here."
So we have two important questions to resolve. The first is to know to what extent it is possible to implement a system in a sociocultural and economic framework different from the one that gave rise to it. And second, to be able to implement such a system to what extent and in what way can this be achieved, in addition to the fact that so much can be expected as a result.
This study must be carried out to determine how possible or impossible it is to implement the Kaizen system in the West, which took place in Japan, but also to know how good results can be expected from it. That is, to know first if it is feasible to apply it in its entirety or not, if possible if it is necessary to make some changes, and how good results can be expected both in comparison with traditional systems in the West, and with Japanese companies.
2. First: let's define Kaizen
Kaizen means improvement. On the other hand, it means continuous improvement in personal, family, social and work life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen means continuous improvement that involves everyone, managers and workers alike.
From a strategic point of view, Kaizen is the systematic and long-term action aimed at accumulating improvements and savings, in order to outperform the competition in terms of quality, productivity, costs and delivery times.
As a philosophy, Kaizen is a way of life and of seeing life. A form of incessant search for improvement aimed at continually exceeding their own levels of performance, and achieving higher levels of consumer satisfaction. It constitutes both a work ethic and an iron discipline aimed at improving processes for the good of both the company and its members, owners, clients and society as a whole. Thus, it is just as important to improve performance levels for a better quality of life for workers, as to supply higher value products to customers and consumers, decrease levels of waste and contamination, improve profits for owners and supply sources of quality work, good wages,for more individuals and with greater job security.
A final definition of Kaizen can be approached from a technical point of view as the set of systems and instruments, both technical and managerial, aimed at continuous improvement through the standardization of processes and the elimination of various types of waste.
However, in the West there are also continuous improvement systems, the question to ask is how different these are from Kaizen. For this, it is necessary to know how each one works, the environment in which they had their origin and subsequent development, and the results achieved.
3. Brief history of continuous improvement
For most, continuous improvement is a Japanese invention, but it is not. Continuous improvement programs were created, developed, and matured in the United States.
The NCR at the end of the 19th century established a system aimed at solving and improving quality levels, as a reaction to the high degrees of dissatisfaction of its customers. This led its president and founder to move his desk to the work area (something that today the Japanese call visiting the gemba), to find out what was happening and to develop a program aimed at improving performance levels in terms of quality, such as costs. and productivity. As a result of his analyzes, he made the workshop a well-lit and pleasant room, with 80% glass walls, the incorporation of doctors and nurses to the staff, improvements in safety practices and even requiring daily physical exercises. On the other hand, a suggestion program was established, the training and education of personnel was promoted,and an organizational development process was implemented.
Another American company that pioneered continuous improvement systems was the Lincoln Electric Company (currently the largest manufacturer of arc welding equipment and supplies in the world). In order to take advantage of the creative and inventive capacity of the personnel, a piece rate was set by contract that would not be altered due to the improvement of methods and increases in productivity. Later, a profit-based bonus system was put in place that included ideas generated when calculating individual bonuses. All this led the company to occupy the first places in terms of productivity, something that still holds today thanks to the maintenance of such policies and strategies.
Procter & Gamble implemented what was called “deliberate change” in the 1960s as a team approach to reduce production costs. This approach is based on the fact that the continuous improvement of the methods allows significant cost savings. Procter & Gamble's philosophy is that "perfection is not a barrier to change." This means that while it may be almost impossible to improve an existing working method, still everything can and should be done to create a different and superior method.
Continuous improvement was introduced in Japan in the early 1950s. Although the Japanese already had a philosophy of continuous improvement, it was applicable above all in personal life and in the warrior arts. It cannot be ignored that they applied continuous improvement processes to a certain extent to their production, but this was limited and the proof of this is that Japanese products were considered in the West as cheap and of low quality, and even as crude and ordinary copies of western products. But it was not until the foray of Deming and Juran's ideas on quality, continuous improvement and statistical process control, that added to the ancestral philosophy produced a true productive explosion and high levels of quality,which led the Japanese industry to completely reverse the view that Western consumers had of it. "Made in Japan" became synonymous with high quality and added value, at a very good price.
On the one hand, continuous improvement was introduced in Japan as it is a cheap way to improve production and reduce costs in a period of severe resource scarcity. On the other hand, it was due to pressure from the occupation authorities to use continuous improvement methods designed to accelerate reconstruction after the Second World War. In 1949, the United States military entered into a contract with TWI Inc. to develop training programs for Japanese companies. The fundamental idea of these programs was to train people in standard methods, so that later they would train others, that is, train the trainer.
Although the Japanese used quality circles and suggestion systems as a regular part of their management, continuous improvement increased their appeal during the 1973 oil crisis, as a method of cost reduction without heavy investment. Thus, the automaker Toyota received six times more suggestions that year than in 1970. Canon started a campaign aimed at being a world leader, which allowed it to save $ 200 million in direct costs thanks to the implementation of the continuous improvement system.
In the 1980s, faced with the invasion of Japanese products, American companies resumed with more momentum the development of continuous improvement systems, among which the results of companies such as Xerox, Motorola, Harley Davidson and General Electric, among others, were notable.
In 1984 in an old General Motors facility located in the state of California, this company together with Toyota established a joint venture company called NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.). The GM plant had closed due to worker-employer conflicts, poor quality and low levels of productivity. To resolve this, NUMMI implemented the Just in Time (JIT) system, stipulated a new agreement with the union (UAW) aimed at improving quality, increasing productivity levels and improving the work environment through Kaizen, which included JIT, quality circles, and suggestion programs. For this to work, the union agreed to reduce the number of job classifications from 64 to 4,in exchange for which the employers undertook not to reduce or dismiss personnel as a result of increases in productivity levels.
4. Distinctive features of continuous improvement
There are two essential characteristics that distinguish continuous improvement systems from traditional ones, also called standards maintenance systems.
On the one hand, under the continuous improvement system, management considers the company's performance level as something “that must be continually faced and increased”. While under the standards maintenance system, it is considered essentially fixed, due to technological restrictions and the existing organization. The only way such restrictions can be overcome is through innovation.
On the other hand, managers of companies that practice continuous improvement believe that employee participation and teamwork are the key to improvement. This is something that does not happen with most managers who follow a standards maintenance perspective. They place more emphasis on process automation than teamwork and participatory management. That does not mean that corporations that follow continuous improvement have no interest in technological advancement and process automation, but rather that they tend to strengthen employee work and growth in the first place.
Among the most important differences between standards maintenance systems and continuous improvement systems are that the latter system favors the existence of multifunctional work teams, participatory leadership, group orientation and decentralized decision making.
5. Special features of Kaizen
Kaizen as a dynamic philosophy accepts and absorbs all those techniques and methodologies that allow the best achievement of its ultimate goals, which are continuous improvement in processes for the purposes of waste disposal, the continuous increase in quality and productivity, to the effects of generating greater added value for users and consumers every day.
Thus, within this continuous improvement system called Kaizen, various techniques are part, many of which originated in western corporations but which in Japan were used within a harmonious and totalizing system.
Among the six main systems that make up Kaizen we have:
- The Just in Time (JIT) System The Total Quality Management System (TQM) The Total Productive Maintenance System (TPM) The small group activities (among which are the Quality Control Circles) The Suggestion Systems The deployment policy
As for the Kaizen philosophy, it is based on two fundamental concepts:
- The firm belief that waste should be disposed of in any way, and the practice of supreme respect for people.
Waste disposal. When the Japanese talk about waste, Fujio Cho's definition of it is "anything other than the bare minimum of equipment, materials, parts and workers (working time) absolutely essential to production"; which means no surplus, no security stock. Nothing is stored. If it can't be used now, then it can't be made now and it's a waste. There are seven basic elements to this concept.
- Networks of specialized factories. Instead of building gigantic facilities where everything is done, the Japanese build small specialized plants. There are several reasons for doing this. First, it is very difficult to manage a large facility; As size increases, bureaucracy grows. His management style does not lend itself to this type of environment. Second, a plant designed for a specific purpose can be built and managed more economically than a universal one. We can compare this to buying a special machine tool to do important work instead of adapting a universal tool. Group technology. Inside the plant, the Japanese employ a technique called group technology. Traditional companies process a job and send it from department to department, because that is how the plants are organized (department of saws, mills, lathes). In general, for each of the machines in the department there is an employee who specializes in that function. For a job to pass through the shop, a lengthy and complicated process is often required due to wait times and movement time (often 90-95% of total processing time). The Japanese, by contrast, take into account all the operations required to make a part and try to group the machines. Thus a single operator can take over the operation of numerous machines,which increases operator utility and eliminates movement and queues between operations within the cluster. This not only increases productivity, but also reduces the inventory of work in progress. To achieve such a practice, people have to be flexible; And for this, you must identify with your companies and have a high level of job security.
- Jidoka, quality at the source. Jidoka means "stop everything when something goes wrong" and is equivalent to quality control at the source. To apply this principle, management must have great confidence in its staff. So instead of using inspectors to find problems someone else might have created, in a Japanese factory the worker becomes his own inspector. Ohno determined that it was best to give each person a single piece at a time to work on, so that under no circumstances could they omit the problems by working on different pieces. Jidoka buttons were installed on Toyota's assembly lines, so that if something went wrong, either because of defective parts or because they couldn't keep up with production, the worker was required to press the button,so as to generate the stoppage of the production line. This motivated the meeting of personnel from various areas in order to solve the problem. Jidoka also means automated inspection, called autonomization. The Japanese believe that inspection, as in automation and robotics, can be done by a machine, because it is faster, easier, more repeatable, or more redundant, so it should not be done by one person. Thus, in Japan, contrary to what happens in the West, stopping the production line is encouraged to protect quality and because management trusts the worker.The Japanese believe that inspection, as in automation and robotics, can be done by a machine, because it is faster, easier, more repeatable, or more redundant, so it should not be done by one person. Thus, in Japan, contrary to what happens in the West, stopping the production line is encouraged to protect quality and because management trusts the worker.The Japanese believe that inspection, as in automation and robotics, can be done by a machine, because it is faster, easier, more repeatable, or more redundant, so it should not be done by one person. Thus, in Japan, contrary to what happens in the West, stopping the production line is encouraged to protect quality and because management trusts the worker.Just-in-time production. The Japanese system is based on a fundamental concept called just-in-time production. It requires the production of the necessary units, in the necessary quantities and at the necessary moment, to achieve a performance with a variation of zero in program time. This means that producing an additional part is as bad as producing one less. Moreover, anything that is not part of the minimum necessary is considered as waste, since the effort and material used to produce something that is not needed cannot be reused. Something different from the usual concept in the West in which the measure of good performance has always been the fulfillment or exceeding of what was programmed.In many traditional companies, manufacturing managers continue to store supplies and finished products in case something goes wrong. In the just-in-time system, the ideal lot size is one piece. The Japanese view the manufacturing process as a gigantic network of interconnected work centers, where the perfect arrangement would be for each worker to complete his task in one piece and pass it directly to the next worker the moment he is ready to receive another piece. The idea is to approach the waiting queues to zero, to:where the perfect arrangement would be for each worker to complete their task in one piece and pass it directly to the next worker when the worker was ready to receive another piece. The idea is to approach the waiting queues to zero, to:where the perfect arrangement would be for each worker to complete their task in one piece and pass it directly to the next worker when the worker was ready to receive another piece. The idea is to approach the waiting queues to zero, to:
- Invest minimal inventory. Reduce production lead times. React faster to changes in demand. Discover any quality problems.
The Japanese consider inventory to be the water level of a pond and the problems that can occur in the workshop are rocks. If there is a lot of water in the pond, the problems are hidden and the management assumes that everything is fine. However, water levels always drop at the worst of times, for example during an economic downturn. Then, management must face problems without having the necessary resources to solve them. The Japanese say that it is best to purposely lower the water level (especially in good times), so that they can clearly expose the problems and give them a satisfactory solution before they cause difficulties. So for the Japanese, inventory is a negative aspect, not an asset.
- Uniform plant load. To make Just in Time feasible, production must have a flow of maximum uniformity. The starting point is what the Japanese call uniform plant loading. Its objective is to absorb normal reactions to variations in work schedules.
- Kanban production control system. The kanban method requires a simple, self-regulating control system that provides good visibility to management. The control and delivery system of the workshop and suppliers is called kanban, a name that in Japanese means card. It is a paperless system, which uses containers and cards or traveling needs that are recycled. This system is also known as the kanban drag system, since the authorization to produce or supply comes from the operations that are later in the flow. Workplaces and providers plan their work on a program basis, but execute it on the basis of kanbans.
- Minimal preparation times. The Japanese productivity method requires small batches to be produced. This is impossible to take hours in the preparation of the machines. Thus, one of the fundamental factors of Japanese success lies in the continuous reduction of preparation times.
Comparison in setup times for an 800 ton press used in the manufacture of fenders and engine covers.
| TOYOTA | U.S | Sweden | Germany | |||
| Preparation time | 10 minutes | 6 hours | 4 hours | 4 hours | ||
| Preparations per day | 3 | one | 1/2 | 1/2 | ||
| Lot Size | 1 day | 10 days | 1 month | 1 month | ||
The savings in setup time are used to increase the number of batches produced, resulting in reduced batch sizes. This makes just-in-time production feasible, which in turn makes the kanban control system practical.
Individualism: refers to a closed social framework where people are supposed to basically care for their own interests and those of their immediate family.
Collectivism: It is characterized by a narrow social framework where people expect others from their same group to take care of them and protect them when they have problems.
A society with a great distance from power accepts great differences of power in organizations. Employees show great respect for people in authority. Titles, ranks, and positions carry a lot of weight. A society with little distance from power reduces inequalities as much as possible.
We live in a world full of uncertainty. The future is largely unknown to us and always will be. Societies respond in different ways to this uncertainty. Some socially prepare their members to accept it with equanimity. People in these societies feel more or less comfortable with risks. They also tolerate, relatively, behaviors and opinions that differ from their own because they do not feel it as threats. These societies avoid uncertainty, that is, people feel relatively safe. A society that avoids uncertainty a lot is characterized by its people feeling a lot of anxiety, which manifests itself in the form of nervousness, tension and aggressiveness. In these societies, as people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambivalence,Mechanisms are created to offer security and reduce risks. Organizations are likely to have more formal rules, deviations in ideas and behavior will be less tolerated.
Some cultures give importance to the amount of life and value aspects such as aggressiveness and obtaining money and material objects. Other cultures tend to quality of life, attach importance to relationships, and show sensitivity and concern for the well-being of others.
- Analyzing certain myths
With this, Heizer and Render, two very important American consultants in Operations Management, clearly reflect the need to apply the main principles on which Kaizen is based in order to achieve Total Quality and make the competitiveness of Western companies feasible.. Continuous improvement, worker participation, Just in Time, Taguchi techniques and the application of management tools are a clear demonstration not only of the need, but also of the applicability, clearly adapted, of the methods and Japanese procedures to western organizations.
- Annex - List of some western companies that apply Kaizen
It should be noted that Kaizen was applied in the following companies in all or part of the areas or processes and activities of these companies.
- Walt Disney World (USA) Sunclipse (USA) Excel Industries Inc. (USA) Leyland Trucks Ltda. (Great Britain) Löhr & Bromkamp GmbH (Löbro) (Germany) Siemens Oostkamp (Belgium) Frigorífico Tres Cruces (Argentina) Matarazzo (Argentina) Alpargatas (Argentina) Infotec (Italy) Fidelity Investments (USA) Lucas Automotive GMBH (Germany) La Buenos Aires Cía. Insurance (Argentina)
- Bibliography
- Kaizen - Masaaki Imai - CECSA - 1999 How to implement Kaizen in the workplace - Masaaki Imai - McGraw Hill - 1997 Theory Z - William Ouchi - Hyspamerica - 1982 Value Creation - William A. Band - Díaz de Santos - 1994 Global Quality - John Macdonald and John Piggott - Panorama - 1993Kaisha. The Japanese Corporation - James Abegglen and George Stalk - Plaza & Janes - 1990The Work of Nations - Robert Reich - Vergara - 1993The 21st Century War - Lester Thurow - Vergara - 1992Organizational Behavior - Stephen Robbins - Prentice Hall - 1993Human Behavior at Work - Keith Davis and John W. Newstrom - McGraw Hill - 1999 Organizational Behavior - Judith R. Gordon - Prentice Hall - 1997 Production and Operations Management and Administration - Chase and Aquilano - McGraw Hill / Irwin - 1992
