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So far, productivity improvement has been prompted by cardinal alarm bells ringing
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However, managers should not wait for this to happen – they should be forever looking for different ways to improve
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‘Kaizen’ is the Japanese word for continuous improvement (CI) – kai is change, zen is good – it’s the Japanese way of doing business
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There’s no special improvement projects involved
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CI involves everyone in an organisation, all managers and employees, working in small teams to come up with ways to make small improvements “day in, day out”
Aims of CI:
Peter Drucker |
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Every small contribution to productivity improvement is deemed to be useful
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As Dr Deming noted, “the big gain is not the £500 per year that the men saved, it’s that the men can take pride in the improvement”
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But when thousands of small, incremental improvements are made, the big gain can also be enormous financially for the organisation
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Just as it was for David Brailsford, UK ‘Team Sky’ coach, when winning the 2012 Tour de France – he put it all down to “the aggregation of marginal gains”