October 2011
Gemba Kaizen Blog
Read recent articles on our blog.
Masaaki Imai Around the World
Masaaki Imai continues to travel around the world leading gemba walks and speaking about kaizen. He is currently preparing for a month-long tour of Europe in November.
Week 45: Manchester, UK
Masaaki Imai will keynote the Manufacturers Director's Conference on November 9th. The event also features presentations by some of the leading names in lean, kaizen and change management.
Kaizen Institute UK has secured a discount for customers and partners. Please contact Paul Monaghan at uk@spam.kaizen.com
Week 46: Almaty, Kazakhstan
Week 47: Italy, Poland, Romania
Week 48: Italy
Contact us to learn more about events with Masaaki Imai in these countries and how to attend.
Kaizen Benchmarking Tours
Kaizen Best Practice Tours
Kaizen Institute has been leading study missions of world class organizations to Japan for the past 25 years. The global merger with Gemba Consulting has allowed us to expand our kaizen tour network worldwide.
Kaizen Tours in Japan:
15-21 Jan, 2012 Kyushu - Accepting Registrations
5-11 Feb, 2012 Hokkaido - FULL
15-21 Apr, 2012 Tokyo area - Accepting Registrations
Join us and take one week with your team to clarify, align and focus on breakthrough improvement strategy that reduces cost and spurs growth.
Download brochure
We now offer "kaikaku tours" in Japan, China, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland and the United States.
Please contact us to organize a benchmarking tour for your company in the USA, Europe or Japan. kaizentours@spam.kaizen.com
Thank you for choosing Kaizen!
Gemba Kaizen 2nd Edition Coming in 2012!
Kaizen Institute founder Masaaki Imai wrote Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low Cost Approach to Management in 1997. This book summarized the essential principles of lean management in 13 chapters, illustrating them with more than 30 case studies. We are proud to announce that Gemba Kaizen, 2nd Edition will be published by McGraw-Hill in 2012.
The lean management principles taught in Gemba Kaizen are timeless. They include speaking with data, visual management, 5S, standards, reducing muda (waste) and the role of managers and supervisors.
The 2nd edition will illustrate these principles with new case studies from many industries including healthcare, retail, service and hospitality from around the world. We will follow up with some of the organizations featured in the first edition to see how they have sustained continuous improvement. More news on this project next month!
Lean Training Center Now Open in Germany!
- Kaizen Lean Training Center in Bad Homburg, Germany
Kaizen Institute in Bad Homburg, Germany is our global center of excellence for the Kaizen College certification program. This September, we opened the Kaizen Lean Training Center. This 800m square space enables interactive learning of lean manufacturing and lean office principles.
We are accepting enrollment for our Kaizen College programs, as well as learning solutions fit to the needs of our clients:
- Customized training programs
- Lean Academy programs (train the trainer)
- Leadership retreats
- Best practice benchmarking
- And more!
We are also pleased to offer Lean Development, a training course which allows organizations to reduce product development lead-times, design products, processes and facilities faster at less cost, and lowers the new product ramp-up curve. The interactive space allows hands-on learning of these principles.
Contact Kaizen Institute Germany to learn about our open-enrollment courses and lean competency development programs tailored to the needs of your organization.
Customer Story: Kaizen on the High Seas at Swiber
Swiber is a Singapore-based offshore engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning (EPCIC) contractor with in-house offshore marine support capabilities. Swiber operates a fleet of marine support vessels which are chartered to customers for projects in offshore oil and gas exploration, development and production and post-production.
In January 2011 Swiber engaged Kaizen Institute consultants from Japan and Singapore to design and lead their lean program. Called CSI - Continuous Swiber Improvement - name is inspired by the American television series where the crime solvers' attention to detail and pursuit of facts from the crime scene is reflected in the lean efforts to go to the gemba (the scene).
Support for Kaizen from Chairman of Swiber
Executive Chairman Raymond Goh wrote to Swiber employees:
"I ask for all of us to remain committed to the essence of CSI - which is to continuously improve. I ask for the humility to learn and accept changes for the better. I ask for the openness and the willingness to share best practices. I ask that we continuously improve even when no one is looking, even if it is just the small things. Sometimes it is in the littlest of details that will make the big difference - that will give us the competitive advantage."
Lean Training Online
For more information:
Gemba Academy, a Kaizen Institute group company, develops and delivers high quality online training in lean, kaizen and continuous improvement topics. As of September 2011 we offer over 206 video modules and 96 hours of learning.
We add new content each month. This month, we have released six modules of the Hoshin Planning course which introduces the policy deployment approach step by steam from strategy development through visual management and daily PDCA.
View our full list of online training courses.