4.3.2 Innovation, kaizen and Six Sigma
Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement. This philosophy is widely believed to be the key concept of Japanese management. Continuous improvement is considered in the context of everything that the company does, from the costs, safety, skills development of employees to new products of services development and productivity.
It is important not to confuse kaizen with innovation. Innovation results in large short term changes to the processes and products and often results from serious investments in technology. The decision to invest is made by senior management and they promote and champion the cause. Innovation is reflected in returns on investment. It is seen, for example, in the use of automation in doing manual work, such as welding by robots in factories, the use of sophisticated cargo handling equipment in ports, the use of technology to service travelling customers on airlines or other modes of transport, and so forth.
Kaizen , on the other hand, is focused on small incremental improvements. In this, financial investment is very little. Everybody - not just senior management - is involved and many improvements result from the suggestions of workers, as well as senior managers. The focus is on people and processes. The primary focus of improvement is people, the logic being that the improvement in the quality of people working the processes will naturally result in an improvement of the output. For this to happen, it is pre-supposed that kaizen will encourage wider vertical and horizontal communications.
We have seen that Six Sigma drives organisations towards zero defects. This forces the organisation to think in radical ways to improve the quality of the output and the processes. This goal brings out the creativity in those involved with the processes and, when the aims are achieved, the improvements are dramatic. We have seen this in the case of Motorola.
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