A Kaizen Event is a one-week or five-day coordinated workshop activity for a specific goal or set of goals to improve a process.
These events contribute to the broadening of the suggestion system and strengthening the problem-solving culture.
Kaizen events are planned and executed by senior management.
Participants identify the problems to be solved long before the event. Then, teams share analyses or data sets about the issues, such as the problem’s size and frequency, at the event’s beginning. Finally, the group compares and verifies the actions taken before and after the event.
At the beginning of the event, employees update their knowledge on problem solving techniques with a short training.
Kaizen activity is an opportunity to focus on the company’s most bleeding wounds. It is an activity where mental effort is predominant. Unfortunately, managers prevent any team from seeing this event as an opportunity to clean up their to-do list. It is a waste of resources for such highly experienced people to spend a week dealing with the daily to-do list.
The company expects teams to focus on unsolved problems and bottleneck processes.
After the event, the new situation of the relevant problems in the areas where improvement is made is analyzed and the size of the improvement is compared with the resources consumed in the event.
