Kaizen Events - When and How to use them

Kaizen Events are a great tool - they can motivate teams, bring people together across departments and create quick and lasting improvement.
So when should you use them and how do they work?
Kaizen Events are high-intensity, short-duration improvement efforts: within a couple of days, or at least not more than 1-2 weeks, you go through a full Process Improvement project.
This, of course, doesn't suit all types of processes - if you're thinking about optimising settings, testing several production runs or using trend analyses to decide on best proven standards, Kaizen Events are probably NOT your best choice. If, on the other hand, you're looking into more logistical processes, synchronising ways of working, breaking through organisational barriers, or any other process where agreement on best work standards is likely more important than analysing specific process-mechanical optimums, then Kaizen Events can seriously boost your effectiveness.
They do need some preparation and a whole lot of aftercare, but condensing the decision-making work into a short timespan forces people to come to an agreement, creates momentum and shows everybody involved that your Continuous Improvement program can bring real change.
For a great course on Kaizen Leadership, I recommend checking out this course by my friends over at Belt Course: www.beltcourse.com/a/21478335...
It’ll go through a lot more than what we’ve covered in this video, but if using and managing Kaizen Events is interesting to you, than this full Kaizen Leadership training package sure will be too.
#continuousimprovement #kaizen #processimprovement
• Kaizen Events - When a...
00:01 Introduction
01:14 Lean vs. Six Sigma
04:02 Challenges in Six Sigma
06:30 Problem Solving with Kaizen
08:17 Structuring for Success
10:57 Duration and Follow-up
14:09 Organisational Impact

[@proletar1660]

Your videos are underrated. You explain things clearly and you deserve more views.

[@TomMentink]

Hahaha, I couldn't agree more 🤣
I'm happy to hear that you like my videos and get value from them - thanks for sharing that. And that's probably also the best way to help me: feel free to share my videos with whomever you think might benefit from them too.

[@GeonQuuin]

I agree! I've been a watching his videos for over a year now and im always getting great value from his videos!

[@GeonQuuin]

Hi Tom! Great video as always. I think what makes Kaizen Events work is having a structure to bring all the SMEs involved in the same room and look at the issue / problem at a high level and being able to zoom in with the SMEs.

[@TomMentink]

Yes, that is a big factor. It is especially important for solving (often cross departmental) organisational issues - hence the usefulness of Kaizen Events for such cases. But it even seems easier in practice to free up key players (like the Subject Matter Experts you mention) totally for a few days than to get a couple hours from them for 3 months 🤷‍♂️

[@TomMentink]

If this topic of choosing and managing Kaizen Events is interesting to you, you’ll also love the Kaizen Leadership course my friends over at Belt Course have put together: www.beltcourse.com/a/2147833560/6eADKB6z
This course starts from the things covered in this video (in fact, this video is the intro to that course 😊) and then goes on to cover all the aspects needed to successfully lead Kaizen Events and keep the gains. And a very nice thing, you simply cannot get from RUclips, is the simulation exercise where you actually practise those skills.