Kaizen and Idea Management Systems

Previously, I talked about Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen and Idea Management systems, but I didn't talk to a great extent about idea management in Kaizen.

First some words about the history of Kaizen. In the Second World War, young US men who might otherwise have been employed in factories went off to fight in the war, leaving at the same time a shortage of skilled men in the factories and an increasing demand for military quality goods - everything from bullets to military clothing.

The solution? America's women stepped up to fill the gap. However as, by and large, the women had not previously been working in the factories, this required rapidly filling the skills deficit and building and improving processes to deliver high quality goods. In response to this need, a program of Training Within Industries (TWI) was produced - see here, here, here and here for some information on TWI. Amongst other characteristics, TWI had a component on "Job Method Training" (JMT) which focused on continuous improvement. This module is highlighted in the following image from a TWI job methods card produced by the Bureau of Training within the US War Production Board:

The job methods improvement approach involves breaking down the job task into its component units, questioning if the task can be improved by eliminating, combining, rearranging and simplifying, and then applying change management by selling the idea to the boss (gaining executive support), selling the idea to the operators (getting the buy-in of the small team of management) and checking off the improvement with all impacted by the change with reference to defined criteria of safety, quality, quantity and cost impacts.

JMT was very much about identifying new ideas and ways of doing things and putting them into practice. For example, a the US TWI service promoted JMT in a December 1942 bulletin as follows:

Perhaps you worked out a better way to do one of the jobs you supervise today. If so, you made an important contribution to victory. But are you working out better methods every day?

Here is a Plan that will help you develop those better job methods now. It will help you to produce greater quantities, of quality products, in less time.

Look for the hundreds of small things you can improve. Don't try to plan a whole new department layout - or go after a big new installation of new equipment. There isn't time for these major items. Look for improvements on existing jobs, with your present equipment.

Participants in the JMT course had to develop an actual improvement and submit it to their managers in order to pass the course, and were told to:

Remember that there will always be a better way. Keep searching for further improvements.

Another important component of the TWI program was a "train the trainer" approach, used to create a "multiplier effect" to spread the methodology widely.

After the war, the Japanese had lost much of its skilled labour force and needed to produce higher quality goods in great quantity and at lower cost to rebuild its economy. US production in high regard, and it is not surprising that Japan was receptive to the TWI program and TWI spread widely. Toyota, for example, founded its own version of TWI - Toyota TWI or TTWI for short.

TWI, however, was not the only such program to gain influence. From August 1945, General MacArthur had taken steps to de-militarise and de-industrialise Japan. This led to a purge of anyone linked to wartime aggression from the management and administration of Japanese national and local governments and educators and senior executives in private industry as well. The result was over 200,000 highly skilled senior Japanese who could not utilise their skills to pursue their chosen careers. However, in June 1950 this changed when the North Korean army invaded South Korea. Now US occupied Japan was to be built up as a balwark against the worldwide communist threat. The base for this defence activity in Japan was the Tachikawa air base. However, this base was identified by the US as having a Japanese workforce with poor work habits who could not operate machinery efficiently and safely and could not perform maintenance and repair tasks to the proper standards. The performance of this base was identified as a bottleneck in the response to the new threat. General Doyle, responsible for the Tachikawa air base, applied to and gained approval from General MacArthur to employ the purged officers, government officials and executives who could not be employed elsewhere and to train these managers in the MTP ("Management Training Program") technique. The result was that MTP techniques were spread widely to Japan's management elite, who could delpoy and reuse them in private industry after the occupation. The MTP method included the following mandates:

1. There is no end to improvements
2. There must first be desire or curiosity for improvements to be conceived
3. Even a very small improvement is worthwhile
4. Improvements are conceived by the person who is conscientiously looking out for details
5. Supervisors must get into the habit of trying to figure out methods for improving jobs and for improving on improvements

In addition, Quality Gurus such as Deming and Juran contributed ideas regarding process and quality improvement at around this time.

The roots of Japanese continuous improvement, therefore, lay in a range of ideas becoming available in Japan that met a real need, and delivered real value. It is interesting to note that while TWI and MTP became highly influential in Japan, after the war they were not deemed as important in America, and as their use dropped in America after the war they rose to become influential in Japan.

However, as Masaaki Imai notes in his book Kaizen: The Key To Japan's Competitive Success:

The American-style suggestion system soon gave way to a Japanese style system. Whereas the American style stressed the suggestion's economic benefits and provided financial incentives, the Japanese style stressed the moral boosting benefits of positive employee participation.

That is, the Japanese approach to continuous improvement - Kaizen - began to be absorbed into and reflect features of the Japanese culture. As Imai notes, Kaizen is:

. . . the basic philosophical underpinning for the best in Japanese management . . . it is the unifying thread running through the philosophy, the sytems, and the problem-solving tools developed in Japan over the last 30 years.

Kaizen has become embedded in the mindset and the culture of many Japanese companies, to the extent that "the Kaizen concept . . . is so natural and obvious to many Japanese managers that they often do not realise that they possess it!"

Some of the features of Kaizen are worth emphasising. Kaizen focuses on process improvements rather than reaching specified results targets. Kaizen needs an ongoing and continued management effort to focus on improvements - Imai suggests this should constitute 50% of management's effort. Kaizen is focused around continuous incremental small ideas rather than major breakthrough innovations. Many of the ideas suggested through Kaizen may be implemented locally, on the shop-front floor where they are first suggested. The Japanese Kaizen approach puts the worker's satisfaction in the workplace high on its ranking of priorities - an improvement will typically be adopted if it improves the workplace experience, regardless of whether or not it produces well defined and identifiable economic benefits. And, perhaps most interestingly, the Japanese workplace is characterised by a highly defined set of processes and work standards. These are adhered to rigorously but evolve as they change in response to Kaizen improvement suggestions, leading to a set of rigorously defined processes constantly evolving over time. As Imai describes it:

In the Kaizen strategy, management must review the current standard and try to improve it. Once the standard has been established, management must make sure all employees observe it strictly . . . if management cannot get people to follow the established rules and standards, nothing else it does will matter.

Finally, establishing and maintaining Kaizen must be approached with zeal. Imai quotes an American encountering Kaizen: "I thought they had two major religions in Japan: Buddhism and Shintoism. Now I find that they have a third: Kaizen!" Imai comments:

Facetious though this sounds, one should have a religious zeal in promoting the Kaizen strategy and not be concerned with the immediate payout. This is behavioural change requiring missionary zeal . . . Kaizen is based on a belief in people's inherent desire for quality and worth, and management has to believe that it is going to "pay" in the long run.

Finally, Kaizen is people oriented: "such things as sharing, caring and commitment are important in Kaizen." Shared "rituals" are also important.

Now, back to Idea Management Systems. Suggestion systems are central to Kaizen. However, the suggestion systems in Japanese Kaizen differ from many suggestion systems in the west, as the heart of Kaizen is in driving and embedding the continuous improvement culture, and Kaizen is focused primarily around incremental workplace-driven improvements rather than systematically building and managing an idea pipeline to identify and invest in major new breakthrough ideas.

Imai suggests that Western approaches to creativity and innovation (Imai terms these collectively "innovation") and the Japanese development of Kaizen are quite complementary to each other. And implementing an Idea Management System provides a vehicle to bring the two together.