June / July 2011
Gemba Kaizen Blog
Read recent article The New Math of Daily Kaizen on our blog.
Masaaki Imai Around the World
Our founder Masaaki Imai continues to travel around the world leading gemba walks and speaking about kaizen. In April he visited New Zealand and in June he spent a week in the United States. This autumn he will be in Europe for two weeks.
Week 47: Italy, Poland, Romania
Week 48: The Netherlands, France
Contact us to learn more about events with Masaaki Imai in these countries and how to attend.
Benchmarking
Kaizen Best Practice Tours
Kaizen Institute has been leading world class benchmarking tours to Japan for the past 25 years. The global merger with Gemba Consulting has allowed us to vastly expand our network of best practice tour locations. We are now able to offer "kaikaku tours" not only in Japan but also in China, Germany, Portugal and the United States.
Upcoming Japan Kaikaku Tours:
23-29 Oct, 2011 Kyushu
15-21 Jan, 2012 Kyushu
5-11 Feb, 2012 Hokkaido
15-21 Apr, 2012 Tokyo
Our clients tell us that our best practice benchmarking tours accomplished more in one week to clarify, align and focus their team on breakthrough improvement strategies than in months of meetings and discussion.
E-Mail kaizentours@spam.kaizen.com
Download brochure
Kaizen Tour Europe: Sept 14 & 15
This year our European "International Kaizen Tour" will visit 3 companies over 2 days, September 14 & 14, 2011. Please download the brochure below or follow this link for full details.
Download Kaizen Tour Brochure
Thank you for choosing Kaizen!
Lean Success Story: Automotive Manufacturer in China
The quest for higher worker productivity is a driving force behind kaizen, and was the primary motivation behind Taiichi Ohno’s pioneering work that led to the Toyota production system. Recently, this same imperative is causing companies in China to look at kaizen for the first time.
Huayu-Cooper Standard Sealing Products, a fabricator of automotive parts such as weather stripping assemblies, is one Chinese company that is taking action. “A year ago, we realized that we needed to make some changes in our manufacturing system,” says Xian Ming Fang, Plant Manager. “In the last year, we decided to bring in a company to help us do kaizen.” The firm selected was Gemba Consulting, Kaizen Institute Consulting Group.
Kaizen Brings Advanced Lean Skills to China
- Carsten Otto
Kaizen Institute merged global operations with Gemba Consulting in January 2011. The Gemba unit in China has been integrated into Kaizen Institute as the China Business Unit. Since March 2011, Carsten Otto has traveled to China each month to lead the effort to transfer knowledge to the Kaizen Institute China team. Carsten is a lean veteran. He is based in Germany who brings rich experience from a wide range of industries. Carsten is providing the team in China with advanced lean training and support, and recently conducted a 2-day public workshop in Total Flow Management.
"My goals are to transfer my knowledge and skills in kaizen to my Chinese colleagues, to establish the Kaizen College as a new business field, and to support new business development efforts especially with European firms in China." Say Carsten Otto.
Kaizen Institute China: Local Lean Consulting Leaders
The Kaizen Institute consulting team has been a leading lean consulting firm in China for the past 5 years (as Gemba Consulting). With the mentoring of Carsten Otto each month, our capabilities are increasing. The hands-on training involves leading workshops together at client sites where local Kaizen consultants deliver value to clients such as BOSCH, LEONI and STIHL while Carsten observes them and coaches them on both facilitation and technical skills.
The Kaizen Management System methodology is being translated into Chinese, as training proceeds in "Kaizen Foundations", "Total Change Management" and "Total Flow Management" methodologies. The "Total Productive Maintenance" training has begun, with the aim of developing capability in China to deliver consulting and certification following the JIPM standard.
In September 2011 we will launch the public training and certification programs of the Kaizen College in China. Carsten is also a regular speaker and facilitator at our "Kaizen Salon" client discussion groups.
Contact us to learn how Kaizen Institute China can assist you.
Reflections on Lean in China
Jon Miller, Executive Director at Kaizen Institute Consulting Group (KICG), has worked and traveled extensively in China over the past 10 years, establishing the lean practice there that is now part of KICG. In this interview, Jon provides some insights on the challenges and opportunities that companies like Huayu-Cooper are facing.
As a whole, where do you see China in the continuous improvement journey?
I would say people are just getting exposed to kaizen, and it's largely in industry at this point. Manufacturing a large part of the Chinese economy, but like any other country there are many other areas that can benefit from kaizen, such as healthcare, retail and logistics.
Productivity was the number one goal at Huayu-Cooper, and they did a remarkable job of using kaizen to make improvements in a very short time. However, some studies, including the one quoted above, allege a productivity gap between China and the West. What’s your sense of that?
On the surface there is a clear gap. But productivity is a strange metric. The measurement of productivity is not consistent between countries.
Lean online Training
For more information:
Kaizen Institute Consulting Group subsidiary Gemba Academy develops and delivers high quality online training in lean, kaizen and continuous improvement topics. As of July 2011 over 168 video modules and 81 hours of learning are available. We add new content each month.
New this month we have a video discussion series with Masaaki Imai, founder of Kaizen Institute and author of best-selling books Kaizen and Gemba Kaizen.
View our full list of online training courses.