Going from a form of management in which production is programmed to push it through distribution channels, to a form focused on generating products and services based on “the pull” or real market demand, requires a strong reform in the way of thinking and seeing both the company and its production and commercial processes.
The new way of viewing and managing stocks, purchases, maintenance activities, quality, training, the way of organization and planning, and the discipline that revolves around continuous improvement, require a reengineering not only of the processes and activities, but and above all things, of the way of thinking.
Thinking with the paradigms of the Taylor industry is no longer valid, just as an example that in 1994 a microprocessor carried out 54 million calculations in a second, only three years later it went on to perform 100 million calculations per second and currently it is already around 1,000 million per second.
Can we think of running a business today in the same way we did in the mid-1990s? The answer is no. Well, all the more reason it is unfeasible to run a business the way Taylor structured it in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At the beginning of the 20th century, our planet had 1,300 million inhabitants, today we are around 7,000 million, where a single country that is Mainland China currently has 1,300 million inhabitants. Out of five heavily industrialized countries at the beginning of the previous century, today we already have at least three dozen countries with high industrial development. Undoubtedly, things have changed, and not in a small way. It has not only been a quantitative change, but also a qualitative one.
Companies have only one way to respond to these strong changes and that is through innovation and continuous improvement. With innovation, the powerful alterations in the environment are faced, and with continuous improvement there is a tendency to consolidate and add results aimed at maintaining strategic and competitive advantages.
Kaizen as a system and philosophy of continuous improvement is essential not only to consolidate the results obtained through the reengineering of the processes, but it requires previously reengineering to make both total quality management a reality, as well as the total productive maintenance and the "just in time" system. Establish work procedures organized around the "U cells", implement the kanban system, restructure the layout, implement management systems and quality assurance, and promote teamwork through quality circles, require a reengineering in the way of thinking, managing and working.
After restructuring the production processes and altering the concepts on which the company's way of thinking is based, it is only possible to proceed with the application of continuous improvement both in products and services, as well as in the processes and activities that generate them.
There is no possibility of continuous improvement under Kaizen, without first applying reengineering to existing processes. In addition, Kaizen has to serve to preserve and improve the levels of performance achieved as a result of reengineering processes.
Reengineering as a form of radical reform in the way of understanding and managing the activities and businesses of an organization is precisely what serves as the basis for moving from a traditional organization to a highly competitive one.
Thus, Kaizen and Process Reengineering interrelate and mutually self-influence. Reengineering serves companies not only to balance capabilities with companies that outperform them, but also to obtain or expand those advantages. Faced with increasingly accelerated changes in the environment, reengineering allows a rapid and effective response.
The Kaizen Reengineering System (SRK ©) is thus a powerful management weapon, both tactically achieving continuous improvement of processes and products, and strategically through the generation of new and creative responses. Continuous improvement with a strong component of creativity and innovation allows us to achieve both absolute and relative high-impact advantages.
