Business Atlas

How Enterprise Is Built
Management Theories

Kaizen

kai-ZEN
Also Known As Continuous Improvement

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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.

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.
Cross-Tradition Connections

Contains

Sources
1. Wikipedia, Kaizen
WikipediaHistory section
Quote, History section
In 1947, Edwards Deming, an American statistician, went to Japan to help enhance their production processes.
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1. Wikipedia, Kaizen
WikipediaLead section
Quote, 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.
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1. Wikipedia, Kaizen
WikipediaOverview section
Quote, Overview section
the word kaizen in English is typically applied to measures for implementing continuous improvement
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