Kaizen in Japan: an empirical study

This paper reports the study of kaizen as practised in a selection of Japanese companies. After discussing the general understanding of kaizen and proposing a clear definition, the paper describes the methodology of the study, and presents findings from the research, taking Nippon Steel Corporation (NSC) as a base model and comparing this with the data from other companies. The development of kaizen activity in NSC is presented together with a description of the current nature of kaizen, which is compared with other firms in the steel and automotive industries to assess uniformity. The paper concludes that kaizen evolves uniquely within each organisation, following changes to the organisation’s business environment. Detailed implementations vary considerably between organisations, but all rely on kaizen to achieve targets as an integral element in the operations management system. This yields insights into kaizen’s sustainability, and points to its vulnerability to external economic conditions. Introduction Many authors have written about the importance of kaizen as a key element in Japanese management, and the concept is often presented as one of the underlying principles of lean production and total quality management (TQM). Yet there remains considerable ambiguity and inconsistency in the way the concept is described in the literature: kaizen is regularly misrepresented as either an endless “free lunch” of improvements which emerge magically from the workers or as the mundane application of suggestion schemes and quality circles (QCs). While many insist on the centrality of the concept, other influential books on both manufacturing and quality effectively ignore the term altogether. Furthermore, there is considerable confusion and inconsistency in the literature and in practice about the definition of the term, as evidenced by the proliferation of terms used as effective synonyms (for example, small group activities, continuous improvement). There have been few systematic studies of how the concept actually works in Japanese manufacturing environments, nor what it means to those who work with the idea. In particular, it has not been clear hitherto how firms can maintain the momentum for kaizen activities, nor how the concept fits into the overall management system of target setting, control and incentives for participants; Bessant et al. (2001) comment on the more number of failures among Western kaizen programmes. This last point is particularly important: many descriptions of kaizen-like activity in the total quality literature seem to rest on a notion of worker participation based on intrinsic psychological The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0144-3577.htm