The Kaizen Philosophy

Human nature is to look for improvement in anything and everything - be it increasing the productivity, improving the quality of the output, decreasing the cost etc. The premise is that nothing in this world is perfect and there is always scope for improvement. The sustainability of any activity depends on the efforts which continuously result in improved performance.

There are many concepts advocating methods to achieve improved performances on a continuous basis. One such concept is the kaizen principle.

The Kaizen is drawn from the Japanese word kai meaning “continuous” and zen meaning “improvement”. The philosophy, therefore, is defined as making “continuous improvement”, slow, incremental but constant.

Kaizen is a means of continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life and working life. At the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement involving everyone - managers and staffs alike. The Kaizen business strategy involves everyone in an organization working together to make improvements without large capital investments.

The Kaizen way encourages small day-to-day yet continuous and never ending improvement process using the most basic tenet of survival.

To understand the benefits of Kaizen, every business may need to undergo certain change whatever degree, without any resistance in order to survive the competition in this fast changing world.

In business applications, Kaizen covers most of the modules of successful Japanese concepts. 5S, Quality Circles (QCs), Just-in-Time (JIT) delivery, Automation, Suggestions systems, etc., are all embedded into the Kaizen system of modern business management.

Kaizen is setting doable, replicable standards and then continually improving those standards because persistent improvements are crucial for the long-term profits.

In most cases these are not ideas for major changes. Kaizen is based on making little changes on a regular basis: always improving productivity, safety and effectiveness while reducing waste and cost.

The Kaizen philosophy is to do it better, make it better and improve it even if it isn't broken, because if we don't, we can't compete with those who do. Kaizen involves setting standards and then continually improving those standards.

Suggestions are major input for the kaizen principle. Suggestions are not limited to specific area such as production or marketing. Kaizen is based on making changes anywhere that improvements can be made.

We are into financial services. We can claim that our service standards are comparable or even better than the competitors. But, the fact is that there is always scope for improvement. Similar is the case with productivity. Our potential need not end with achieving the targets. There is something beyond. Let us look for that extended thread and link ourselves. Always look for ways to do things better and better.

Let us kaizen.