Collaborating for Change: Gemba Kaizen - Softcover

Imai, Masaaki; Heymans, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583760385 ISBN 13: 9781583760383

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2000

Synopsis

Summary

This booklet gives an overview of Gemba Kaizen, a change strategy which builds a culture able to initiate and sustain change by providing skills to improve process, enabling employees to make daily improvements, installing JIT systems and lean process methods in administrative systems, and improving equipment reliability and product quality.

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Description

Kaizen, as an organizational change process, emerged in postwar Japan through U.S. economic reconstruction assistance. Companies that embraced Western best practices created world-class products and services. Kaizen is a holistic process using the World-Class Manufacturing strategies of Just in Time, Total Quality Management, Total Productive Maintenance, and Total Employee Improvement. Its goal is to create customer value using value-added processes with minimal waste. It succeeds when employees “catch the fever” of continuous improvement.

The essential notion of Kaizen is that

* All work can be improved * All work processes contain waste * Reducing or eliminating waste provides real customer value

What has captured the imagination of Western business is the Gemba Kaizen workshop. It is a four-to-five-day learning and implementation event in which six to ten managers and workers learn Kaizen concepts, principles, methods, and tools and implement them in real time. It is equally applicable to factory floor situations, business development, and administrative systems and processes. The Gemba Kaizen workshop is a rapid-change process, providing the skills for long-term continuous improvement. It creates a culture where waste is constantly attached and eliminated by everybody, every day.

A strength of the Gemba Kaizen workshop is that it improves real work processes, implementing the business strategy in real time. Learning coupled with rapid implementation focuses participants on common goals. They quickly learn the value of their diverse skills and experiences. The intense focus and immediate application unite the team, generating a newfound synergy.

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Synopsis

The Collaborating for Change series offers concise, comprehensive overviews of 14 leading change strategies in a convenient, inexpensive format. Adapted from chapters in The Change Handbook, each approximately 48-page booklet is written by the originator of the change strategy or an expert practitioner, and includes

* An example of the strategy in action
* Tips for getting started
* An outline of roles, responsibilities, and relationships
* Conditions for success
* Keys to sustaining results
* Thought-provoking questions for discussion

If you're deciding on a change strategy for your organization and you need a short, focused treatment of several alternatives to distribute to your colleagues... Or if you've decided on a change strategy and want to disseminate information about it to get everyone on board, the Collaborating for Change booklets are the ideal choice.

Other titles in the Collaborating for Change series:

* Appreciative Inquiry
* The Conference Model
* Future Search
* Gemba Kaizen
* Open Space Technology
* The Organization Workshop
* Participative Design Workshop
* Preferred Futuring
* Real Time Strategic Change
* The Search Conference
* The Strategic Forum
* The Think Like a Genius Process
* Whole-Scale Change
* Whole Systems Approach

About this title

About the Author:

McGraw-Hill authors represent the leading experts in their fields and are dedicated to improving the lives, careers, and interests of readers worldwide

From Library Journal:

In this sequel to his popular business/quality management book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success (1986), Imai offers a step forward?continuous improvement (kaizen) applied to the concept of continuous improvement in the workplace (gemba). The book reflects a definite operations bias. Indeed, Imai advocates the removal of all those peripheral things (muda) that cloud the focus of an organization. Some of the principles, such as the need for good housekeeping, seem simplistic, but Imai is on solid ground, demonstrating the practicality of gemba kaizen with a number of abbreviated case studies. The one weakness is the lack of adequate recognition of precedent setters: F.W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1912) and the work of W.A. Shewhart, W.E. Deming, J. Juran, etc. All in all, essential for business collections.?Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1583760385
• ISBN 13: 9781583760383
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 36