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Japanese academic says kaizen can help Indian companies to increase profits

Pradip K Bagchi in Tokyo

In a Japanese manufacturing plant, if any worker looks for tools like hammer or wrench, they are expected to be found within 30 seconds. Dies of a giant stamping machine must be replaced within ten minutes.

These are some of the numerous examples of work management at the individual level, made possible by kaizen which permeates the Japanese industry, making it one of the most competitive in the world.

Kai in Japanese means change and zen means better. Thus kaizen as a work philosophy entails continuous improvement with no extra costs and very little effort.

Dr Seiichi Fujita, professor at Sanno College of Management, says kaizen is the foundation of modern production management techniques such as '5S' -- seiri (organisation), seiton (neatness), seiso (cleaning), seiketsu (standardisation) and shituke (discipline).

Just in time or JIT is the concept of producing or conveying only those units needed, just when they are needed and in just the amount they are needed at all stages of production.

''Compared with innovation, kaizen is a relatively small work improvement change which can be done at the individual level. It needs sensitisation of the workforce which almost all topline Japanese companies have been able to do in their penchant for high quality, low costs and timely delivery of goods and services,'' he says. It is called QCD.

The peripatetic professor of management, who collects kaizen examples during his frequent jaunts abroad, says it can be applied in all walks of life including at home to ''make life better''.

Showing a photograph of a traffic signal in New Delhi, he points out that replacement of the word 'Stop' with 'Relax' at the red light is actually an example of kaizen. ''It is basically aimed at changing the response of road-users for better traffic compliance. '' 'Stop' reads like a command while 'Relax' sounds like an advice,'' he says. The Indian capital is the first city in the world to have implemented this idea.

''The first step in kaizen is breaking through the status quo,'' adds Fujita. This also requires a work culture and societal attitude conducive to kaizen activities.

In India, he says, kaizen activities would be relatively difficult to come by due to lack of ''problem consciousness'' as also the status quoist attitude. ''There is a 'no problem' attitude. Despite realising certain problems, Indians tend to overlook them ... No problem, no kaizen,'' he says.

Fujita, who has had academic stints with some American universities, prescribes the inculcation of a 'kaizen-mind' to bring about a change in the Indian work environment. ''Support to kaizen consciousness and activities can be bred through the school system... At the end, every society has to evolve its own system,'' he adds.

Kaizen implies selection of better means or a change of current methods for achieving an objective or an accumulation of small changes. Explaining the steps, Fujita says kaizen can be achieved through elimination, reduction and change. ''In a workplace, it becomes important to eliminate search to save time ... The cordless phone is an example of kaizen through elimination (of the wire),'' he says. ''Too many landmarks on a city map make the search of the destination difficult,'' he adds, giving an example of kaizen through reduction.

According to Bunji Tozawa, managing editor of a journal published by the Japan Human Relations Association, there are three essential elements to the kaizen process -- awareness, idea and commencement. ''Awareness means finding out the problem, idea implies counter-measures and commencement calls for enforcement,'' he explains.

Fujita says kaizen is of particular relevance to developing countries where profits could be enhanced by reducing wasteful expenditure.

UNI

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