We still LOVE the Kaizen Blitz process and offer it as a mainstay as part of our Kaizen consulting services. Adapted more than 40 years ago, it is still a great technique to rapidly improve a defined area of your facility.
A Kaizen Blitz combines the Japanese word “kaizen”, which means improvement, with a systematic, energetic, and concerted blitz effort to take a manufacturing process apart and put it back together in a more efficient way.
First, upper management, working with the folks, decide on an area that is ripe for rapid improvement. Not meeting goals, quality issues, planning for increased volume, bad culture – all good reasons to do a kaizen blitz.
Before the blitz, certain measurements are taken (actual numbers), and management decides where those numbers need to be to be able to meet the expectations of the company.
During the blitz, the first 3.5 days are spent analyzing the actuals and using techniques to improve the current process. The line is then modified quickly on the fourth day and night, and the new line is running and measured on the fifth day.
After your first blitz, other parts of your facility will ask when is their turn.
As Kaizen consulting workshop leaders, we can train your employees to do this technique so you can become your own implementer to control your consulting costs. Please talk to us for more information.
Kaizen was popularized by Japanese manufacturers after WWII, when manufacturing experts consulted with statistical control experts to standardize work in factories, improve processes, and eliminate waste. The excitement over these statistics-based methods were coupled with the cultural dedication to Japanese teamwork and discipline, and the mantra of “continuous improvement”.
Of course in the West, everything needs to happen quickly, so Kaizen consulting experts streamlined rapid improvement workshops that focus on specific, targeted areas of manufacturing operation, and this concentrated event became known as a Blitz. Kaizen blitzes typically last 2-10 days and are usually quite effective at producing sizable bottom-line gains, providing there is department-wide buy-in and a plan in place to measure and track future results so the there is no slippage.
As a Kazien consulting firm, we can train your department-heads and line workers in this technique so you can become your own Kaizen implementer, helping you to minimize your consulting costs.