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Manufacturing companies these days are struggling with employee engagement. High turnover and employee engagement are common issues that leaders and human resource departments face regularly.
One of the fundamental pillars of lean management is introducing the concept of continuous improvement. Manufacturers that adopt kaizen culture and engage their workforce see a significant increase in manufacturing productivity and employee morale.
What Does Kaizen Mean In Manufacturing?
Kaizen is the philosophy of constant improvement. Being a Japanese word, “kaizen” means “changing something for the better.” With kaizen, manufacturing units can continuously develop their standardized processes, equipment, and other daily production modes by eliminating waste.
Successful kaizen efforts result in enhanced productivity, refined quality, lower costs, better safety, employee satisfaction, enhanced communication among employees, and upgraded customer satisfaction.
Kaizen is well known for being applied in manufacturing industries. Furthermore, a workplace that genuinely follows lean management ensures that perpetual improvement isn’t just a management initiative; instead, a concept carried out by every worker in an organization.
Understanding the Kaizen Events
A typical Kaizen event follows the following five steps:
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Setting goals and producing the necessary background.
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Examining the prevailing state and generating a plan for improvements.
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Executing improvements.
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Reviewing and fixing the things that don’t work.
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Reporting results and determining any follow-up items.
This type of cycle is usually known as PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, and Act). PDCA brings a scientific approach to creating improvements:
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Plan (create a hypothesis)
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Do (do the experiment)
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Check (examine results)
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Act (improve your experiment; then start a new cycle)
The PDCA Cycle provides an easy and productive approach for solving problems and managing the change. It allows businesses to form hypotheses about what needs to change, test them in a perpetual feedback loop, and obtain valuable learning and knowledge. It encourages testing advancements on a small scale before updating them in your company-wide work methods and procedures.
Tips for Achieving Continuous Improvement with Kaizen
Beginning a journey toward constant improvement is a long-term commitment and a significant undertaking. Below are tips for success in your kaizen efforts:
1. Empower your Employees
Employees are the significant assets in your kaizen efforts, so give them the support they need to execute improvements. Developing your team’s skills through training and support should be a vital part of your continuous improvement program. Moreover, involving team members to recognize problems and suggest improvements in their work areas builds a sense of ownership over their work, thus improving overall morale, motivation, and productivity.
2. Systematize Your Work
For improvements to last, you need to make them systematic and standardized. Standardizing work is an essential factor in order to execute Kaizen because it builds a baseline for improvement and growth. Whenever any upgrades are made to a process, it’s necessary to document the new standard work. It helps in sustaining the improvements and creating a new baseline. Routine work also decreases variability in processes and encourages discipline, which is imperative for constant improvement efforts to take root.
3. Focus on Small Changes
Follow the change that is made in small and incremental steps. Just imagine if your productivity improves by 1% every day for a year, you’ll be 37 times better in the coming year. By testing and implementing small changes, you increase the speed of growth and decrease the risks of executing a major change.
Try focusing on implementing improvements in solving the root causes of the issues. This way, employees reach minor issues before they become larger and costlier to eliminate. Moreover, it prevents the same problems from reoccurring.
4. Build your Own Kaizen Guidelines
While there are many online sources that help you implement your kaizen efforts, it’s essential to understand your company’s kaizen journey personally. The important part of your continuous improvement plan is considering your kaizen efforts after improvements.
As you ponder on your existing efforts, work on your own kaizen guidelines. Begin with creating procedures based on your experiences in improving the workplace. Just keep in mind that these guidelines should be for your successors, colleagues, and yourself to understand the intricacies you have overcome. These guidelines will eventually assist you as you approach your next challenge.
5. Enforce Improvements
It’s comfortable for employees to revert to their former ways. Emphasizing the changes that you’ve made to your processes is essential for the improvements to last, and more importantly, it’s the key to maintaining constant improvement in the long term.
The best ways to enforce improvements are documenting them, making sure everyday work is up-to-date, and tutoring employees on the new procedures. These ways can help in sustaining the progress that you’ve made in your continuous improvement efforts.
6. Get Organizational Buy-In
Make sure your organization recognizes the significance of the Kaizen event to your business’s bottom line. Gaining buy-in is essential for the completion of your kaizen initiatives. If you are dedicated to implementing the culture of perpetual improvement, you will set the tone for the rest of the company.
Further, your employees must have the support that they need from managers to implement the improvements. Or else your team will be working on a series of isolated efforts.
7. Rinse and Repeat
Follow the continuous improvement cycle: see the workplace, identify the problems, and implement the solutions. Examine the workplace time and again after implementing Kaizen. You’ll probably still notice the waste happening. This is a perfect opportunity to try new ideas since you already know what the problem is and what needs to be done.
Implementing Kaizen in your manufacturing unit requires a long-term commitment to a series of efforts and improvements. Developing a mindset of constant improvement in your unit’s culture requires daily practice. With time, you’ll see an escalation in the productivity, efficiency, and quality of your operations.
Conclusion
By implementing the above strategies and tips, you will be putting in place practical actions to make employee satisfaction a top priority. After all, your employees are valuable assets and need to be recognized and rewarded regularly.
Source: Manufacturing App
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