Integrated Manufacturing Excellence Initiative

Categories

Excellence in Applying KAIZEN™ Principles

In this category, the applicant (organization) is evaluated on its KAIZEN™ maturity. The assessment is observation-based, conducted by experienced assessors at the client premises, evaluating the application of the five KAIZEN™ principles:

#	KAIZEN™ Principle	Application Example
1	Create customer value	a) The organization knows the customer needs by market segment. b) The organization is dedicated to quality and to fulfil customer expectations.
2	Let it flow	a) Leaders know how to design, create, manage and improve processes. b) Staff members understand the concepts of muda (waste), mura (variability) and muri (difficulty).
3	Be gemba oriented	a) The workplace is organized for efficiency, visual management is used to make waste, standards and behaviors visible. b) Leaders go to the place of work to understand problems first hand.
4	Empower people	a) Business objectives are deployed (cascaded) throughout the organization. b) All leaders share KAIZEN™ skills and role-model a KAIZEN™ mindset as they develop their teams.
5	Be scientific and transparent	a) Management decisions are based on the long-term vision. b) Decision-making and problem-solving is based on real data from gemba (gemba gembutsu).

Besides scrutinizing the robustness of the five KAIZEN™ principles, the ‘Benefits tracking’ section evaluates what the organization has put in place to ensure employees know where the organization is heading, how they have progressed, and how customers and the organization is benefitting from the KAIZEN™ efforts.