The heart of Lean Manufacturing is continuous improvement through unlocking the limitless potential of all employees. Toyota a few years back received over 900,000 improvement ideas from their employees with almost all of the implemented. In this three-hour workshop you will learn and experience the principles of Quick & Easy Kaizen.

Purpose: To make work easier and more interesting for all employees through their own implemented ideas focusing on improving customer service, improving quality, reducing costs, improving safety, improving morale and improving throughput.

Each person, in truth, is an idea generator. The worker in their 25 square feet of space is the expert, rarely asked to participate in finding and solving the endless problems confronting them. Quick and Easy Kaizen is a management tool to unlock the hidden potential locked inside every single worker. We are here, I believe, for one purpose and that is to grow and serve. We start by serving ourselves, making our jobs easier and more interesting; then we serve our customer, the next person who uses our product or service. To survive in this most challenging of times we must harness the creative abilities of every single employee, Quick and Easy Kaizen will help you do just that.

The choice is yours. Why not make you job easier!

COURSE OUTLINE

1. Turning ideas into success - How to please both your internal and external customers.
2. Challenge all employees to be responsible for change
3. Small changes add up to major improvements
4. Kaizen begins with you
5. Improving by changing methods
6. Make productivity and service improvements by changing methods
7. Small changes not big changes
8. Kaizen is involving all employees on a day-to-day basis, continuously
9. Kaizen is not a home run. It is a single. An accumulation of continuous hits.
10. Changes within realistic constraints.
11. What to do when the change is met with resistance?
12. Kaizen means continuous change.
13. Exercise in writing Kaizen reports - 3 minutes with less than 75 words
14. The Kaizen process:
    • You recognize a problem
    • You write the problem in your handbook
    • You come up with the improvement idea and you also write the solution in your handbook
    • You present the idea and the solution to your supervisor
    • You implement your idea yourself or with your fellow team members
    • You keep the supervisor informed of your daily progress
    • You write up the implemented idea on the Quick and Easy Kaizen form and submit it to share with your coworkers

You also will learn:

• Definition of Kaizen
• Rules of Kaizen
• Principles of Kaizen
• Elements of Kaizen system work
• Essential steps
• Stages to develop a Kaizen system
• Obstacles to a creative idea system

SCHEDULING

QUICK & EASY KAIZEN should be presented to groups of 30 or fewer participants, which should represent management and supervisory personnel responsible for personnel in all organizational functions. We can also teach you how to teach all of your employees to create an internal bandwagon. Call 206/850-7007 or email coordinator@nwlean.net to schedule an in-house seminar, or to coordinate a public seminar in your area.

CONTACT INFORMATION

QUICK & EASY KAIZEN has been jointly developed by Norman Bodek (President of PCS Press, Inc.), and Bunji Tozawa (CEO of the HR Association of Japan). Seminars are coordinated by NWLEAN INC. For more information regarding the program, contact NWLEAN at 206/850-7007, or send email to coordinator@nwlean.net.