Modular Kaizen Vs Kaizen Blitz: How to Choose Between These Two Kaizen Business Process Improvement Methodologies for Accelerated Productivity, Profitability and Organizational Excellence: Business Process Management and Continuous Improvement Executive Guide series, #7

By Shruti Bhat

Modular Kaizen Vs Blitz Kaizen book details challenges, benefits and challenges of startegic implementation of Modular and Blitz Kaizen. It provides useful tips about when and how to choose Modular or Blitz Kaizen depending on the problems existing at your workplace.

 

About the author: Shruti Bhat PhD, MBA, CLSSBB
Dr. Shruti Bhat is a global leader in operational excellence, business transformation, innovation management and continuous improvement. She is a true Thought Leader with numerous industry awards, patents, publications and successful projects to her credit. She has a Ph.D (Tech) in Pharmaceutics, MBA and is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Kaizen coach. She is the Chief Operations Officer at Innoworks Inc., a Canadian Research & Management Consulting Co.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shifting Paradigms, Canada
• Release date: May 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781988663098

Book preview

Introduction

The starting point for improvement is to recognize ‘the need’. Kaizen principles emphasize problem-awareness and provide clues to identifying problems. Once identified, problems must be solved. Therefore, Kaizen is also a problem-solving process. But, most of all, Kaizen is a management philosophy that forces higher standards at all levels of the organization by encouraging continuous improvement in all processes- Kaizen is dual in nature.

Duality of Kaizen

Kaizen is intrinsically dual in nature. It is a union of ‘Kaizen Philosophy’ and ‘Kaizen Action Plan’.

As a philosophy, Kaizen is about developing organizational excellence by creating awareness. It is all about building a company-wide culture where all employees, senior management, and stakeholders are actively engaged in identifying and ideating ways of improving the business’s performance, operations and processes.

As an action plan, Kaizen is about organizing Kaizen events, workshops, action force and focus groups, dedicated to ideate and implement improvement plans to the company’s existing processes, to make them better. Kaizen events are run by employee teams from all levels of the company, especially those most close to the process (being considered for improvement).

Kaizen has various formats- Lean Kaizen, Gemba Kaizen, Modular Kaizen, Blitz Kaizen, Process Kaizen, Flow Kaizen, Agile Kaizen, Daily Kaizen.

Gemba Kaizen, Process Kaizen, Flow Kaizen comprise ‘Kaizen Philosophies’, while Lean Kaizen, Modular Kaizen, Agile Kaizen, Daily Kaizen and Blitz Kaizen are ‘Kaizen Action Plan’ to take a company from being Good-to-Great!

Do you want to initiate Kaizen in your organization? As it is said, every big achievement begins with a small step.

Know what you would like to improve: Identify the problem.

Modular Kaizen

Modular Kaizen business improvement methodology allows for continuous improvement to take place in an environment that experiences frequent disruption or interruptions. Modular Kaizen business process improvement tool that aims to stop panic when a problem arises. It is a modified version of the standard Kaizen process and is designed to bring about fast results. Unlike standard Kaizen, Modular Kaizen does not distract key employees (such as managers and operators) from their regular duties until it is necessary.

Modular Kaizen works well with other process methods such as DMAIC (Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control) and PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) models.

Moreover, Modular Kaizen can be used simultaneously with other business improvement methods such as ISO, Balanced Score Card, Lean Six Sigma etc.

Lowering disruptions is an intrinsic feature of Modular Kaizen. The action isn’t required until each stage has been checked and evaluated, which requires analyzing data and making sure that the solution is applicable to current processes. Modular Kaizen doesn’t encourage panic response to a problem. In fact, it encourages things to calm down and settle before coming up with a plan to implement changes.

Modular Kaizen uses many of the traditional Lean manufacturing tools but slightly modifies them to make it more applicable to working environments. The main tools of Modular Kaizen are created to figure out the current performance level, figure out where and what the disruptions are and to lower, or completely get rid of, waste that does not contribute to the flow efficiency within a business process or operation.

The first stage of Modular Kaizen is to ‘Check’. The ‘check’ stage focuses on the exact areas that are being disrupted. This deals with investigation and understanding the reason(s) for disruption. It is assessed to see if the disruption happened due to special circumstances and aims to find out who and what caused the disruption. It is also evaluated to check the urgency of the matter. The timeline of the disruption is documented as well.

The next stage after check is to ‘Act’. While it may seem counterintuitive, Modular Kaizen recommends monitoring the situation and to refrain from action until appropriate monitoring has taken place. After monitoring, it is time to investigate by assigning a team to have an in-depth look at the disruption and to report their findings. ‘Act’ stage calls for processes to be updated and standardized for using them effectively and efficiently. No actions take place until the first stage of checking is complete.

During the Do stage, ideas of improvement are tested using a variety of tools (discussed later in this whitepaper). This helps figure out which resource would be ideal for the situation, while testing it out in a time frame that is more desirable.

Modular Kaizen makes sure to schedule many smaller events to allow individuals to continue with their regular work. This makes it ideal for implementing at any given stage of a process, since