OBJECTIVES Kaizen, or continuous improvement, lies at the core of lean. Kaizen is implemented through practices that enable employees to propose ideas for improvement and solve problems. The aim of this study is to describe the types of issues and improvement suggestions that hospital employees feel empowered to address through kaizen practices in order to understand when and how kaizen is used...

In the decade of 1980, management techniques focusing on employee involvement, and empowerment through teamwork approach and interactive communications and on improving job design were not new, but Japanese companies seemed to implement such techniques much more effectively than others .The business lesson of the 1980's was that Japanese firms, in their quest for global competitiveness, demonst...

Kaizen is a part of Lean Manufacturing that focuses on the concept of continuous improvement to reduce waste. For implementing Kaizen on the factory floor, comprehensive and efficient tools for data acquisition, process measurement and analysis are required. The MTConnect open specification provides for costeffective data acquisition on the manufacturing floor for machine tools and related devi...

Many business organizations have started incorporating methodologies of resource wastage minimization, concentration on added value tasks and permanent quality improvement through the use of kaizen philosophy. The concept behind the Kaizen philosophy relies on the distinction between value adding and non value adding activities, and then the focus on improving the productivity level of some pro...

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 k...

This study examines the link between Kaizen practices and different culture dimensions in Vietnamese manufacturing companies. The study follows the cultural framework suggested by House et al. (2004) and three typical Kaizen practices implemented in Vietnam such as Small Group Problem Solving, Process Control and Employee’s Suggestion. Statistical techniques such as path analysis and regression...

Kaizen events are an increasingly common organizational improvement mechanism aimed at work area transformation and employee development. While many anecdotal design prescriptions exist, there is little empirical evidence of which input and process factors are most strongly related to Kaizen event outcomes in practice. This paper uses results from a field study of 51 events in six manufacturing...

INTRODUCTION Recent position statements from health care organizations have placed a strong emphasis on continuous quality improvement (CQI). CQI finds many of its roots in kaizen, which emphasizes small, low-cost, low-risk improvements. Based on the successful Kaizen Programs at organizations such as Toyota, the authors thought the emergency department (ED) would be an ideal environment to ben...

Kaizen events have been widely reported to produce positive change in business results and human resource outcomes. However, sustaining or improving upon the results of a Kaizen event over time can be difficult for many organizations and has received limited empirical research attention to date. This paper identifies the factors that most strongly influence the sustainability of work area emplo...

Integration of workplace employee health promotion (HP) and occupational health and safety (OHS) work into organizational quality improvement systems is suggested as a way to strengthen HP and OHS activities in an organization. The aim of this article was to study what consequences integration of HP, OHS and a quality improvement system called kaizen has on the frequency and type of HP and OHS ...