certified kaizen practitioner v1.0

(C) The School of Continuous Improvement

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Certified Kaizen Practitioner

By The School of Continuous Improvement

Disclaimer


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This Certified Kaizen practitioner is being offered to the interested and qualified individuals so that they can apply this simple process improvement methodology in their organizations.

Our sincere thanks to San Masaaki Imai, the pioneer of Kaizen and Toyota Production Systems to have bought this simple methodology to the world.

We don’t intend to reinvent the wheel and thus, we present to you this module on Kaizen sources of which you would find on the Internet aplenty.

Don’t attempt to reproduce sections of this module.

Of course, you would have an assessment and a project at the end of the module based on which you would be certified.

Body of knowledge


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a. Introduction to Kaizenb. Kaizen as a culture, a set of events and a philosophyc. Prerequisites of a Kaizen eventd. Steps to do a Kaizen evente. The A3 Deploymentf. Kaizen project closure and signoff


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Introduction to Kaizen

Introduction to Kaizen


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1. Any form of improvement is known as Kaizen. Kaizen means “Change for the better”.

2. Kaizen can be applied to improve:a. Processesb. Equipmentc. People

Types of Kaizen


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1. Point Kaizen – These are discrete and unrelated events in an organization, or in the organization’s business units.

2. Line Kaizen – These are two or more connected discrete Point Kaizen events all belonging to the same process.

3. Plane Kaizen – Connection of various Line Kaizen events is further known as Plane Kaizen. Think of a value stream of the production, marketing and sales departments.

4. Cube Kaizen – Finally, when Kaizen as a philosophy and a culture is applied to the entire organization, you have said to have applied Cube Kaizen.

Types of Kaizen


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Examples

Kaizen event idea Kaizen event type

Improvement to a set of 3 machines in a factory having 25 machines

Point Kaizen

Improvement to a particular shift maintaining operations of all 25

machines

Line Kaizen

Improvement to the manufacturing flow

Plane Kaizen

Improvement to the manufacturing flow, planning, procurement and

sales functions

Cube Kaizen

Types of Kaizen


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1. Broadly, it can be said that point kaizen events need the least amount of resources as well as time but the improvement will be very localized.

2. It is not mandatory for Kaizen events to have a direct financial impact. For example, a contact center reduces a metric, After Call Work % from 4% to 2%. This will not have a direct financial impact.

3. Reducing ACW% will result in higher ability of the work floor to receive more calls. Importantly, it could also reduce wait time during high call volume periods, which will result in less Abandoned Calls %.

4. This could result in less customer dissatisfaction, if the correlation between Abandoned Calls % and customer dissatisfaction is proven.

As you can see, it is not necessary for Kaizen events to have a direct financial impact.

Standards for Kaizen


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1. Whether Point or Line or Plane or Cube, you need standards before you implement any Kaizen activity.

2. Can standardization be termed as a Kaizen event? --- Interesting question, and as you guessed it, yes. It can be termed as a Kaizen event. Why --- When you standardize you are preparing the base for the process to improve. And even by standardizing, you would improve certain bits of the process.

3. Standardization could include things below (A limited list):a. Documentation of proceduresb. Training of associatesc. Integrating to the Standard Operating Procedures


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Kaizen as a culture, a philosophy and a set of tools

Kaizen as a culture


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1. Factories or service centers that wish to use Kaizen as part of their continuous improvement efforts need to focus a lot on operator involvement.

2. In spirit, Kaizen demands that you respect people. The concept of GEMBA KAIZEN illustrated in the infographic in the next slide clearly points out how Kaizen can be instituted as a culture in organizations.

Kaizen as a culture


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GEMBA Kaizen principles teach all of us that we should spend most of our day’s time should be spent on the shop floor.

Some mistakes most of us make

1. Organizing a team meeting at the start of the shift in a closed cabin.

2. Seeking explanations on what happened wrong, if targets were not met for the last day.

3. Counseling individuals for how they can improve for the day at hand.

Kaizen as a philosophy


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The below mentioned principles govern Kaizen as a philosophy:

1. Respect for people at all times.2. “Improve it even if it is not broken”3. Continuous Improvement4. Everyone in the organization should come up with an idea for

improvement.5. Little changes on regular basis, i.e. small and incremental improvements.6. Setting standards, improving on the standards and set new standards.

Kaizen as a set of tools


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The below mentioned tools can be used in Kaizen Blitz events:

1. Genchi Genbutsu2. VA-NVA Analysis3. TAKT Time4. Standardized Work5. Creative Thinking6. Financial Benefits Calculation7. Control Plan8. Root Cause Analysis

In further chapters, we shall be discussing these tools in detail.


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Pre-requisites of a Kaizen event

Prerequisites of a Kaizen event


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• Kaizen as a philosophy is implemented by ways of events known as Kaizen Blitz events.

• Successful running of Kaizen events need full support of management and operators, i.e. all stakeholders’ support is important.

• Standards are a must for running of any Kaizen. You need standardized processes, i.e. documented and repeatable.

• A good sustenance culture to sustain the benefits of a Kaizen event.


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Steps to do a Kaizen event



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• Standardize• Identify opportunity• Set goal• Current state map• VA-NVA Analysis• Root Cause Analysis• Improvement plan• Documentation and Standardization• Result validation• Planning for next Kaizen



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Manufacturing

Let us first take a manufacturing case. A factory manufacturing nuts has 20 machines and produces a throughput of 4 tons of nuts daily as against a design capacity of 6 tons. The gap exists because the machines experience heavy downtime.

Services

An insurance firm reports a 20% dropout in paying insurance premiums after the 1st year due to poor customer service provided by the company. This 20% dropout has resulted in a financial loss of approximately $300,000 per year to the company.



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Identify the opportunity

Manufacturing

The opportunity for improvement here is Reduction in machine downtime. The downtime is measured at 37% of the operational time with the factory operating for 450 minutes a day.

Services

The opportunity for improvement here will be analyzed after we review reasons for customer service with the help of a Pareto Chart.



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Identify the opportunity

Services

Pareto Chart for Customer complaints

The unscaled Pareto charts tell us that customers complain 67% of the times because the company doesn’t send statements on time.

Customer impact – When customers receive delayed statements, they pay the bills late, resulting in late charges.



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Set goal

1. Setting the goal for Kaizen improvements shouldn’t be difficult although you may want to use a whole hoard of statistical tests to determine what is the apt goal.

2. As the top management and process experts would be involved ask them, “How much do you want accomplished in one-two week’s time”?

3. A very realistic improvement goal could be anywhere in the range of 10-20% in the operational indicator for the first Kaizen and thereafter work on increments of 5% each until you reach the break point of improvement.



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Set goal

Manufacturing

The manufacturing company decided to trim the downtime to 25% of the operating time, i.e. reduce the downtime by 12%.

Service

The services company decided to reduce the dissatisfaction levels due to not sending statements on time to 30% of all complaints, i.e. a 36% reduction from the existing 66% of all customer complaints.

Since the goal most of the times would be provided by the top management, buy-in is a given. Cases where you/ project team decides the goal, make sure the same is communicated.



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Current State Map

1. After finalizing the goals for improvement, the project team needs to draw the current state map of the process.

2. This could be in form of a Value Stream Map, a Flow Chart, or a simple write down of all the tasks being performed in the process.

3. This is important because once you know the goal, you’d also want to know the process you would want to improve.

4. During documentation of the current state process, make sure you walk the floor and document the process as it is.



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Current State Map

Manufacturing

Machine commences run

Operator notices possible fault.

Operator stops the machine

Operator removes settings and

troubleshoots

Operator calls the maintenance

team.

Maintenance team troubleshoots.

If spare parts needed, maintenance team requests

spare parts

Maintenance team adds spare parts

Machine testingMachine re-

commences run



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Current State Map

Services

New insurance file opened

Insurance plan approved.

Backend operator enters details.

Every week Friday, backend operator batches

policy numbers by premium due date

Operator codes REFX to the

system

Correspondence team receives

REFX

One day after receipt correspondence team prints

statements

Correspondence sends to Mailing

department

Mailing department mails

out.

Statements received.



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VA-NVA Analysis

1. Now that you have documented the current state process, make sure you get this signed off by the top management/ process experts. Of course, they would be with you when you do this, but still get this done.

2. Ensure you show this process map to the operators as well. Note some keen operators would drop their jaws when they see this.

3. What do you think you should do next? --- Alright put these activities up on an Excel spreadsheet and gather some data on how much time these activities consume.

4. Once done, mark the activities as Value added or Non-value added. Value added are those activities that add value to the customer’s product or to the value chain.



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VA-NVA Analysis

Manufacturing

Interpretation

1. 45 minutes of downtime out of 450 minutes isn’t too huge. You would think so!!

2. But machines undergo this cycle of events 3-4 times a day.

3. 135 – 180 minutes time lost in downtime.

4. And that explains our predicament!!



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VA-NVA Analysis

ServiceInterpretation

1. Now, this is tricky. The first 3 steps take all of just 25 minutes.

2. The value added time for the last 4 steps take all of 35 minutes.

3. But, there are days delays between these steps, resulting in a lead time of approximately 32 hours addition.

4. See T+1. This means Correspondence team receives REFX next day after completion of step 3.



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VA-NVA Analysis Summary

Manufacturing

1. Value added time for repairing machines is only 13 minutes whereas remaining 32 minutes are non-value added.

2. The goal is to reduce 155 minutes of downtime to 105 minutes of downtime per day (37% baseline to 25% future state).

3. We need to reduce the non-value added time of 33 minutes per downtime resulting in 132 minutes of total downtime due to non-value added tasks.



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VA-NVA Analysis Summary

Services

1. If due dates are for the upcoming week and if the backend operators code the policies properly for due collection, the mails should leave the company office by Friday.

2. Activities 4-7 cannot take 1 day lag between them to process out the letters.

3. Considering the average letter-outs at approximate 1,500 per week, this issue is relatively simple to tackle.

4. The goal is to ensure reduction of late deliveries of letters by 36%.



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Root Cause Analysis

1. Nothing happens without a reason and in our case, the non-value added times are seen because something is resulting in them to happen.

2. These things we can’t see with our naked eyes. These are known as Root Causes.

3. To uncover root causes, you need to conduct a technique called Root Cause Analysis.

4. Root cause analysis can be done using a variety of tools. We use the simplest of them all --- 5 WHY Analysis.

5. Ask the question WHY 5 times for a symptom and more or less, you would find out the root cause.



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Root Cause Analysis

Manufacturing

Action Root Cause

Operators remove settings from the machines

Parts are fixed with one another and screws and nuts need to be loosened for parts to be

removed.

Operators call maintenance team

Maintenance team are located at the other end of the factory and sound signals cannot

be heard by the maintenance team.

Spare parts retrieval time Operator goes to CNC workshop to retrieve spare parts



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Root Cause Analysis

Services

Action Root Cause

Correspondence team sorts statements in ascending

order of names

Old standard guidelines outlined by previous process owner requiring to do so.

Coding of RPX involvescorrespondence

Correspondence team is the only one to have access to RPX retrieve. Dependency on

Correspondence team.

RPX coding lag Coding issue on application. When RPX is entered by a department, it will move to the

next department only the next day.



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Root Cause Analysis Summary

1. When you identify the root causes, make sure you share them with the entire team and also to the operators.

2. This is a big breakthrough for you because you have found something which has not been found before, or has been found before but no action has been taken.

3. What you have found is good, but you now need to put an improvement action in place. In most Kaizen projects, this is known as Countermeasure.

4. Whenever we talk of countermeasures, we talk CAPA – Corrective action and Preventive Action.

5. Corrective actions will correct the faults after it occurs, while preventive action will prevent the fault from happening.



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Improvement Plan

Brainstorm with the process experts and the operator team and identify how can you fix the root causes.

Manufacturing

Root Cause Improvement action

Parts are fixed with one another and screws and nuts need to be loosened for parts to be removed.

New turning hammers and screwlifts to be ordered which will do this faster.

Maintenance team are located at the other end of the factory and sound signals cannot be heard by

the maintenance team.

All machines to be connected with a circuit breaker connected to an alarm signal (Red and

Green). Red signal indicates problem with machine and maintenance team to attend quickly

on seeing the red signal.

Operator goes to CNC workshop to retrieve spare parts

Spare parts to be listed as by priority and backup spares to be kept in the main workshop.



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Improvement Plan


Services

Process Re-design

1. The IT Department will enable Backend operations team to code RPX directly.

2. The IT Department will add the logic to mailing and correspondence for due date – 7.

3. The IT Department will code for self-printing of letters from mailing department.



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Improvement Plan


Services

The process re-design we spoke about in the previous slide was just a way of dealing with the situation at hand.

We could have developed a set of KPIs for the correspondence and the mailing department, or increased the number of staff or done a VA-NVA Analysis for the activities to be done in the correspondence and the mailing section.



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Improvement Plan

1. If need be, conduct a Cost Benefit Analysis. Given the fact that Kaizen events are short run events, you wouldn’t want to bother with costing technicalities.

2. In special cases where a preventive equipment needs to be bought, or a special purchase has to be made to deliver the benefits, Cost Benefit Analysis is required.

3. Don’t bother with doing Risk Analysis at this point of time. As this is a short run event, we can highlight the risks for sustenance phase and guess what ---We could do a Kaizen on Kaizen to tackle the risks.



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Improvement Plan

Data collection for pre-post validation

Manufacturing

1. Collect data for 7 days.2. Use Box Plots to show pre-post comparison.3. Downtime before improvements were at 155

minutes.4. Downtime after improvements are at 105

minutes.5. We have managed to generate a 50 minute

improvement per machine, which was the goal of our project.



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Improvement Plan

Data collection for pre-post validation

Service

1. Collect data for number of complaints received daily due statements not received for 7 days.

2. Use Box Plots to show pre-post comparison.3. Complaint % before improvement was at

66%.4. Median complaint % after improvement was

at 32%.



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Documentation and Standardization

1. Once we have been able to achieve pilot gains, make sure you standardize this.

2. Document the new way of operating in all operating manuals.

3. Setup visual controls so that all operators and the management can see what is happening.

4. Setup a space on the shop floor where you can enter daily production/ attrition numbers.

5. The shop floor manager will enter the data for the concerned metrics on the board, which can then be seen by the operators and the management.



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Result Validation

1. In the Improvement section, we managed to complete a pilot round of improvement with satisfactory results.

2. We reduced the machine downtime for the manufacturing company by 50 minutes and the complaint % due to late delivery of statements by 35% (3,500 basis points).

3. All this could mean something to the business in terms of finances.

4. Is it possible we could check the financial returns from our respective projects?

5. Note – Not all Kaizen projects need to be financially beneficial. But, as a golden rule, if you are improving something in the office, it would fetch you money, directly or indirectly.



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Result Validation

Manufacturing 1. As we can see from the data line plot displayed for 14 days, the post improvement production capacity has moved up to about 5.2 tons a day from the baseline of 4 tons a day.

2. You don’t need to do this during the Kaizen event.

3. Officially the Kaizen event can close with setting of new standards. This can be done to verify sustenance of the Kaizen event.



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Result Validation

Service 1. The customer attrition has dropped from past levels of 20% to approximately 16%. Of course we can mirror this to the drop in client dissatisfaction due to late receipt of statements.

2. You don’t need to do this during the Kaizen event.

3. Officially the Kaizen event can close with setting of new standards. This can be done to verify sustenance of the Kaizen event.



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Planning for the next Kaizen

1. Once results have been sustained for approximately 14 days after pilot results and standardization, the footprints for the next Kaizen event can start.

2. By the 1 month end of the Kaizen sustenance, the factory would have shown a downtime being maintained at approximately 25% and the service company would have still been stable at 16% attrition of customers.

3. Should you feel the need, you can increase the sustenance period to 2-3 months before planning for the next Kaizen.

4. Once ready, repeat the steps from Slide 20 – Slide 45 to gain the best benefits out of Kaizen events.



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Kaizen events Timeline

Activity Deliverable Timeline for completion

Top leadership buy in Top leadership commitment with timelines for project

1 day

Standardize All processes documented 2 days

Set goal Goals for improvement set 1 day

Current State Map Have current state map prepared 1 day

VA-NVA Analysis Time study and all activities time mapped 3 days

Root Cause Analysis Root cause of all NVA activities 2 days

Improvement Plan Set the improvement plan 2 days

Validation of results Pilot and results collection 8 days

Sustenance Controlling achievements of Pilot 1 month



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Kaizen events Timeline

1. As you can see from the timeline, the main Kaizen event would run for approximately 14-17 days.

2. A lot of literature would mandate running these Kaizen events for 1 week. It is quite possible, for which you would need a lot of time involvement from the project team itself.

3. A successful Kaizen event will ensure all sustenance bases are covered and thus in 2 months from the start of the Kaizen event you would have delivered a well-sustained Kaizen event.


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The A3 deployment

A3 Deployment


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1. A3 is actually a paper size, which symbolizes a problem solving approach conceptualized by Toyota.

2. According to Toyota, if you cannot summarize a problem and its solution in 1 paper, you didn’t do a good job.

3. The A3 Problem solving approach follows pretty much the methodology we have discussed in Slide 20-46.

4. When you put all the findings from Slide 20-46 in a structured A3 format template, we are said to have used the A3 Deployment approach.

5. Sounds too simple isn’t it!!

A3 Deployment


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The A3 Deployment Template

A snapshot has been attached here for your review

A3 Deployment


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The A3 Deployment Template

Here is the updated A3 Sheet for the Service sector case for your review. You can keep using this sheet as and how you make progress with the Blitz project.


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Kaizen Project Closure and Signoff

Kaizen Project Closure and Signoff


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1. Kaizen project closure should ideally happen only after the 1-month sustenance plan passes off successfully, i.e. you don’t see a lot of fluctuations in the data.

2. The project closure means all new initiatives and standards have been documented, operators have been trained, managers know how to track improvements and stakeholders know how and when they would be communicated.

3. Signoff should happen on the version controlled Standard Operating Procedure and the A3 template for the project.

4. At the time of Project Signoff, a commitment must be made by the team to initiate a new Kaizen/ PDCA activity to continue improving.

Bottom-up Deployment


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1. Ideally Kaizen events need top management support right from the start of the event; ideally before the start.

2. In cases where top management support is not forthcoming, or if they want to see the results before they could commit, you could do Bottom-up deployment.

3. As these events are fairly simple to conduct in their approach, you could run these events to improvement an operational metric in a localized manner.

4. Once you improve the performance showcase this to the top management.

5. As the top management likes to see results, be sure they’d commit once they see your results.


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Next Steps

1. Take the Technical Assessment for the Certified Kaizen Practitioner here. (Click on the link).

2. Proceed with identifying an opportunity and completing a Kaizen Blitz project.

3. Provide the final presentation of the Kaizen Blitz project to [email protected] .

4. Attend pre-scheduled interview of the project.5. Successful evaluation of the project will lead to certification as Certified

Kaizen Practitioner.

mailto:[email protected]

certified kaizen practitioner v1.0

Business

kaizen introduction

pioneer of kaizen

kaizen eventd

kaizen evente

kaizen sources

applied cube kaizen

kaizen project closure

set of events