What is Kaizen?
Kaizen is a methodology used to improve situations without a large outlay of capital or change. It relies on incremental and approachable change, over a period of time, in order to gain larger benefit.
Or simply stated by Ben Franklin, “Little strokes fell great oaks.”
A Brief History
During the Great American Depression businessmen needed a way to keep their businesses growing and thriving. They devised a method of change that involved small, continuous improvement. During World War II Roosevelt called on these businessmen to help utilize the industrial complex of the USA in order to build up a war time arsenal. A manual created by the U.S. government to help companies implement this business philosophy urged factory supervisors to “look for hundreds of small things you can improve. Don’t try to plan a whole new department layout — or go after a big installation of new equipment. There isn’t time for these major items. Look for improvements on existing jobs with your present equipment.”
After WWII America introduced this method of change to the Japanese to help them rebuild and revitalize their industry and country. While the Japanese used and refined the methodology to great success (calling it ‘Kaizen’ which means ‘continuous improvement’ in Japanese), many US businesses went way of “radical innovation” and left the successful method of continuous improvement behind.
The result is that US companies are now asking companies like Toyota, who utilizes Kaizen, to train them on business process improvement. It seems that huge outlays of capital and radical innovation cannot be sustained in business.
825 Technologies strives to help our clients by utilizing Kaizen within their IT Infrastructure.
How 825 Technologies Utilizes Kaizen to Help Our Clients Succeed:
- We pick the most glaring problem(s) and fix it(them) first to help stabilize the existing environment and make it productive.
- We inventory what is on-hand, what is under utilized, and what can be spruced up. Then we document it! (We later use this inventory list in Step 4) We then suggest simple improvements to better use the technology you already have.
- We start a maintenance program to keep equipment runningas long as possible.
- We develop a capital plan for the client based on budgetary needs.
- We communicate regularly with suggestions to better leverage technology.
The result for most of our clients is a more streamlined, powerful and useable Tech Infrastructure.
If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to let us know!
