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Management Theory

Kaizen

kai-ZEN
Also Known As Continuous Improvement
Quality and Process Improvement Theories

Kaizen is a Japanese business concept asserting that significant positive results can be achieved through the cumulative effect of many, often small, improvements across all aspects of a company's operations. It grew out of the work of American business advisors, including the statistician W. Edwards Deming, who traveled to Japan in 1947 to help improve the country's production processes during postwar recovery. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Core Claim
Continuous, incremental and cumulative small improvements to a process, made by everyone involved in it, yield significant positive results over time. 1
Origin Year
1947 1
1947 marks Deming's early postwar visits to Japan; the kaizen training film credited with introducing the term more widely in Japan followed around 1951.
Classification
Topic (Functional Area)
Operations 1
Connections

Addresses Topic

Operations, Practice Disciplines

Associated With

Operations, Practice Disciplines
Source Wikipedia, Operations management
PDCA Cycle, Management Theories

Kaizen improvement efforts are commonly carried out using the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

Source Wikipedia, Kaizen
Total Quality Management, Management Theories

Kaizen's continuous-improvement philosophy is a foundational element of Total Quality Management practice.

Source Wikipedia, Kaizen
Toyota Production System, Management Theories

Kaizen (continuous improvement) is a core operating principle of the Toyota Production System.

Source Wikipedia, Kaizen
Sources
1. Wikipedia, Kaizen
Wikipedia
  • Lead section
    Kaizen (Japanese: 改善; "improvement") is a Japanese vocabulary word that outside of Japan has been adopted as a concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results may be achieved due to the cumulative effect of many, often small (and even trivial) improvements to all aspects of a company's operations.
  • Lead section
    outside of Japan has been adopted as a concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results may be achieved due to the cumulative effect of many, often small (and even trivial) improvements to all aspects of a company's operations.
  • Overview section
    the word kaizen in English is typically applied to measures for implementing continuous improvement
  • Associated With: Toyota Production System
  • Associated With: Total Quality Management
  • Associated With: PDCA Cycle
View the Source
Wikipedia, Operations management
Associated With: Operations, Classified by subject-matter domain within management theory (w-bbfill-business-other-0926); cites the discipline definition.View the Source
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