Developing an approach to leading a successful transformation is the latest challenge for busy executives. However, Andrew Scotchmer argues that such a challenge can be met by firstly involving those around us in an organizational wide clean up campaign.
In the current business climate, change has become the latest buzzword with companies of all sizes, big and small, clamoring to find that elusive, almost mythical, route to complete company wide improvement and organizational change. As such, much has recently been said, and written about, the Japanese method we call lean.
Beginning in the Toyota plants of the 1960's, lean, or the Toyota Production System as it is also known, became their standardized working practice and a way of producing high quality vehicles delivered exactly when the customer demanded and at lower costs than their competitors. Such were the effects of the “Toyota way,” that organization's around the world, and from many areas of public and private sectors, began imitating their methods. One of the latest sectors to take on board the lean approach to drive improvements and change is healthcare where hospitals and family surgeries are learning the benefits of focusing on adding value with each activity.
Unfortunately many of these businesses, and usually at the suggestion of expensive consultants, begin their “lean journeys” without first laying down a necessary platform for improvement and growth. Jumping ahead to the more challenging and exciting aspects of value-stream mapping and problem solving, they miss the many aspects of lean that are vital in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the change effort and that the changes made will ingrain themselves in the very culture of the organization.
The Kaizen approach to Improvement
At the heart of the Toyota Production Method is the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which is often translated as continual improvement. The word itself is made up of two “kanji,” or Chinese, characters; the first, “Kai,” meaning “an ongoing change” and the second, “Zen,” meaning “for the better.” Hence a deeper understanding of the words meaning would be “continually changing for that which is better.”
Masaaki Imai, founder of the international consultancy practice, The Kaizen Institute, referred to Kaizen as the “the key to Japan's competitive success.” Central to this approach is the reliance on teams to drive operational improvements and change. Within a Kaizen/lean members staff at all levels are positively encouraged to offer improvement suggestions on a regular basis. These changes, if found to be feasible by management, are fully implemented bringing about a greater sense of ownership and a sense of belonging for the individual or department concerned whilst creating an atmosphere of entrepreneurial creativity.
The Japanese are by nature drawn to the group rather than the individual. It is a country that very much likes conformity and finds much reassurance in the security it brings. This is in direct opposition to the western view of individualism, where the preference is for uniqueness and being your own person. Due to these cultural differences, whilst the Japanese concentrated on forming harmonious groups within the organization, we in the western hemisphere looked at ways to stamp our own marks on projects and developed management theories more focused on top down control than horizontal integration.
One technique in the Kaizen toolbox, and the one most often misunderstood in the west, is 5S. The focus of this technique is to remove waste, or unnecessary items of stock and movement, in the workplace and by doing so, make these areas of activity more effective, productive and comfortable in which to work. Unfortunately many companies view this method as a simple tidying up exercise, and as such omit its implementation altogether, missing the full benefit it can offer us in laying down that all important platform for improvement. It is with this last thought in mind that this article will discuss.
The benefits of a 5S Kaizen approach
5S Kaizen integrates the workplace reconfiguration aspects of 5S with the other improvement tools associated with the Kaizen method in a very seamless fashion. 5S stands for 5 Japanese words that can be translated into English as:
Sort.
Straighten.
Shine.
Standardize.
Sustain.
The 5S method brings us a sequential approach to reorganization that involves all members of the department or area under review. As mentioned above the main focus is to remove waste from our working environments and as such fits seamlessly with the other tools and techniques that have been clustered under the umbrella of the Kaizen method, tools and techniques such as poke-yoke, kanban, hoshin kanri and pull systems.
Research conducted in Hong Kong in 2002 found that implementing a more integrated 5S program, 5S Kaizen, raises quality, efficiency and productivity levels, whilst lowering associated costs. Not only that, but workplace safety and staff morale also improved considerably. Producing clean and airy environments in which to work has also shown to improve concentration levels and lowers the causes of work related stress.
Another study conducted in the UK this year (2007) also agreed with the Hong Kong findings. A number of companies who had implemented 5S Kaizen wrote of the benefits it offered with one respondent in particular writing that, though being very skeptical to begin with, on seeing the results and the improvements made, became a staunch convert. A statement given by many who experience the transformational changes this approach can bring.
