Kaizen Kanban is a guide to creating prioritized project pipelines and setting up improvement boards to maximize business success through the execution of continuous improvement projects. It introduces to the Faster and Better visual facilitation approach that enables you to seamlessly leverage and combine fundamental tools in order to identify improvement opportunities for entire value streams, compile them in a prioritized project pipeline, and set up improvement display boards, or kaizen kanbans, linked to key business objectives.
Kaizen kanbans follow the same principles used with traditional kanbans. They are visual communication tools and are visible to all levels of employees within the organization. The difference is that instead of telling operators what to build next or what parts to retrieve, the cards tell improvement teams what pre-approved projects are most relevant to current business needs and are next in line for implementation.
This approach is designed to complement and enhance the effectiveness of quality, lean, continuous improvement, and project management initiatives that may already be in place in an organization.
Fabrice Bouchereau is Project Manager and Senior Principal Engineer at ProcessZen Consulting. He is an industrial and systems Engineer, facilitator, and trainer with 18 years of experience managing lean, quality and continuous improvement projects. He has collaborated with best-in-class companies such as MD Anderson, GE Healthcare, GE Transportation Systems, Baxter Bioscience, IGLOO, FMC Technologies, Halliburton and Trelleborg Offshore Construction. He is fluent in English, French, and Spanish and has delivered training in the United States, Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America. He holds a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering and an MBA in International Business and Marketing, both from the University of Miami. Bouchereau is a Licensed Professional Engineer (PE), Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM), and ASQ-certified Quality Auditor (CQA), Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence (CQM/OE), Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB), and Quality Engineer (CQE). He is a member of the Texas Board of Engineering (TBOE), Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), American Society for Quality (ASQ), Institute of Industrial Engineering (IIE), Project Management Institute (PMI), American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS), and Toastmasters International.
