The term kaizen, in Japanese, means "change for the better", it is also utilized by companies as "continuous improvement". There are two types of kaizen: Systemic aimed at improving the value stream of the product as a whole and the process that aims to reduce waste in specific areas of the stream. Systemic kaizen can also be found in various literatures named as kaikaku which means "radical change". The way in which continuous improvement is applied depends on the experience of each company, because it can start with systemic or kaizen process. In both cases it is necessary to use a tool called Value Stream Mapping (VSM), as it directs the improvements in such a way so that it will not be lost. For example, imagine that the lead time (time that the company takes to transform feedstock into finished product traversing all necessary processes) of a product is two hours and that the organization spent weeks working to reduce one minute of this time using kaizen of process. It is noticed, after examination of the value stream, this process would not be necessary for the processing of the product. In this case, all the improvement work involving people, machines, etc., would be lost. Therefore, before initiating a specific improvement it is necessary to know the entire value stream, ie, all processes of transformation of the product from door to door, and make sure that all of them are mandatory and shall not be modified, unified or principally eliminated. Organizations who have never had that culture is suggested to start implementing kaizen of process in a single product and after learning, expand it to all value flows of the company. After using the VSM the company will have the vision of transforming the product as a whole and thus, reduce the possibility of losing that some improvement made in a part of the process.
To use the kaizen in Lean IT it is necessary to understand first if the company uses information technology to support the business or as a main source of income (software house). In the first case the value stream map (VSM) of a product of the organization that is supported by IT must be done. Figure 1, from the book Lean IT - Enabling and sustaining your lean transformation, Steven Bell shows an example of how one MFV represents the flow of information from the input (customer request) to the filing.
Figure 1. Example of Value Stream Map. Source: Bell, C. S. and Orzen, A. M. (2011), Lean IT - Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation (p. 39). New York: CRC Press.
When viewing the table "Summary Data" from the previous figure, it is noticed that the actual working time on the request is only 1.4 hours, while the client waiting to receive something is 18.96 days. The NVA (non-value-added) is 99.7%. It becomes evident that concentrated efforts to reduce the cycle time does not add value to the customer because the first problem to be solved is to reduce the lead time of almost 19 days. From using the VSM it is possible to show what happens in a company through measurements originated from real events and not how people believe it to be happening. This is one reason for using the Gemba (go see and make your own conclusions). In the case of an organization using IT as the main source of income, for example, a software house, you can use the VSM initially to identify what types of information pass through each department, organizing people physically in accordance with the process and not more silos. The purpose of sistemic kaizen, in this case, is to approach the employees in order to create an information flow, making it arrive more quickly to customer. Besides kaikaku, the kaizen of process applied in IT can be understood as daily improvements be it for enterprise systems or those that are being developed for clients, in individual or team work process, or even by means of checklists. According to an estimate by Steven Bell in his book Lean IT, the time to implement kaizen culture in an IT organization takes six months (with pilot projects and localized gains), up to two years (to diffuse continuous improvement) and three to five years (to start a true change - influencing the way people see their work, viewing problems as opportunities for improvement).
The application of continuous improvement in a company requires a lot of effort and skill to know if what is being done is correct. In addition, the person responsible for the product must aligne these possible improvements in the value stream with the Hoshin of company. If the strategy defined by the organization is, for example, add or remove items from the package, there will be changes in the process and any improvements in these areas may be lost. Even the kaizen of process must be carefully applied; it should only be done after a stable and standardized process. It is understood that to improve something, from the point of view of the business of a company, you should think first: the application of kaizen is aligned with the organization's strategy, if the value stream is lean and standardized work was established in each area of the process, if not the improvement might be unnecessary, turning later in waste. When it comes to improvement, mainly to reduce costs, it arouses interest in any company to use kaizen, but it is important to understand that continuous improvement should not be taken only in periods of need, but always. Large organizations such as Toyota, uses kaizen daily trying to find problems and improve each time more, showing the true spirit of lean culture. In other words, change is not done from outside to inside, but from inside to outside.
Bibliography
- Morgan, J. M. e Liker, J. K. (2008), Toyota Product Development System - Portuguese Version. São Paulo: bookman
- Bell, C. S., Orzen, A. M. (2013), Lean IT - Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation. New York: CRC Press