Kaizen Institute founder and best-selling author Masaaki Imai continues to travel the world spreading the message of continuous improvement and respect for humanity.

Meet Mr. Imai in 2013 at the following events:

• May 14-15: USA TWI Summit
  
• October TBD: Italy
• November 3-8: Brazil

Contact us to learn more about kaizen conferences with Masaaki Imai.

Dear friends and colleagues,

I wish you health, happiness and continued energy to do kaizen in 2013.

This year I will reduce overseas travel from previous years in order to focus on finishing my next book. However, I will be in the USA in May and Europe in the autumn. I am also looking forward to my return to Brazil after many years.

I will speak at the TWI Summit in Savannah, Georgia USA on May 13-14. As those who have read my book Gemba Kaizen already know, I uncovered TWI during my research and brought it to the attention of the world after nearly 50 years of being forgotten. Today TWI – Training Within Industry – is a critical part of the quality and human resource development strategies of leading companies. I hope you can join me at this important event.

I hope to see you at one of my limited speaking engagements this year, and invite you to connect with me via LinkedIn.

Sincerely,

Masaaki Imai,  Founder

Kaizen Institute

A major Japanese company that manufactures and distributes office supplies and office furniture has engaged Kaizen Institute to work with its sales network of 40+ locations across Japan.

"Their goal is to increase revenue by raising the effectiveness of the sales process. We help them do this by listening to the ideas of the sales staff and doing gemba kaizen," said Brad Schmidt, COO of Kaizen Institute. who is also based in Tokyo, Japan.

The results so far have been impressive. A small team in one sales office in northern Japan was able to increase hours spent with customers from 630 hours to 1025 hours as a result of kaizen activity. Another sales office of a European firm near Tokyo has sustained a 32% increase in sales merely 2 months after starting the kaizen activity.

Responding to a need from customer in the Japanese market, the Kaizen team in Tokyo developed the "Top Line Kaizen" method in 2011.

"The front-end processes such as marketing, product development and sales have traditionally been overlooked by the kaizen or TQM efforts of many companies. By motivating and educating sales people, enabling them to work as a team, they are able to make drastic improvements."Says Schmidt.

The Kaizen Institute team in Tokyo supports clients in capable in English and Japanese, to both domestic companies and multinationals in Japan.

Contact: Kaizen Institute in Japan

Website: Visit Kaizen Institute homepage

Kaizen in Logistics and Supply Chains by Euclides A. Coimbra will be published in May 2013 by McGraw-Hill, detailing the process of implementing the "pull flow" system across the supply chain.

In 2012 McGraw-Hill published Taiichi Ohnos Workplace Management: Special 100th Birthday Edition  by Taiichi Ohno, with new material and commentary by John Shook, Masaaki Imai, Jeffrey Liker and more!

Also by McGraw-Hill, look for a new title Creating a Kaizen Culture: Align the Organization, Achieve Breakthrough Results, and Sustain the Gains by Jaime Villafuerte, Mike Wroblewski and Jon Miller in the fall of 2013.

Masaaki Imai is hard at work on his follow third book to Gemba Kaizen, look for it in early 2014!