Kaizen is a Japanese word and philosophy which speaks about continuous improvement throughout the life. This principle is also applied in workplace. In the workplace this word reflects about the need for continuous improvement throughout the organization right from the CEO to the assembly line worker. This principle became the action force after world war ll. This principle was developed to encourage people doing repetitive tasks and routine work to perform experiments on their work using the scientific method. This principle makes everyone in the rung of ladder to work for the company. Kaizen principles make everyone involved with the company which gives the employees a sense of togetherness with the company. In some world class companies such as Toyota Kaizen principle is applied extensively. In these companies small group of workers improve their work environment and productivity by employing small changes. These small changes done by each group of workers improve the productivity of the company in general and it also increases the research. These small changes made by the workers of Toyota have given the leader great edge in competition and innovation. This process also eliminated the need for greater overhaul in the process field. These small groups of workers are headed by a supervisor who spears head the entire development part of the work. This powerful idea has been applied by many multinational companies worldwide. Companies worldwide have made it a necessary for prospective employees to possess knowledge and real time application experience of kaizen in everyday work life. Getting kaizen certification should be the basic and preliminary step for management graduates. Kaizen certification also helps in understanding lean management principles much more easily. Kaizen certification helps in improving innovation from lower rung employees to the higher top level management. There are various tools, techniques and software`s which need to be understood and learnt to understand and apply kaizen management in everyday life. There are many companies which give kaizen courseware certifications but candidate should select a recognized and reputed kaizen certificate provider. Kaizen certification should give the candidate an edge over others in his management cadre. Also employees give promotions to those employees who stay abreast with the latest developments in their field of work. Many recruitment agencies and employers are opting candidates who have additional certification from reputed certification providers. Many multinational companies are using Kaizen principles in their everyday work life and they would like to have their prospective employee understand kaizen principles.   In many of the management books you will come across kaizen and kaizen principles. Management courses may teach you kaizen principles but a certification will explain your prospective employer about your qualifications and depth of knowledge about the subject. Right from CEO to junior management everyone needs to learn about kaizen principles and their relevancy in the organization. Top level management needs to understand the kaizen principles much more than others because they decide the future course of the organization and it becomes much more important for them. There are various different kinds of sources to learn kaizen principles out of which it is better to opt course material offered by certification providers.  www.brainmeasures.com presents its easy to understand and interpret courseware cum certification of kaizen at very affordable prices, to get more information just register yourself at www.brainmeasures.com and get the benefits of this worldclass courseware at very affordable price. an iso 9001-2000 certified online certification company which peovides online testing services to individuals and corporate.WP Autoblog Plugin

(1) Incremental improvement: is the pursuit of improvements through a process of small, ongoing changes. This kind of improvement is associated with bottom-up, people driven continuous improvement. It is based on the belief that an organisation should never be satisfied, and should always seek to do better. Some of the techniques associated with incremental improvement include: * quality circle-regular meetings of groups of workers to tackle quality problems and undertake improvement activities in their immediate work area. * Employee suggestion schemes- encouraging, recognising and rewarding employees for improving products and processes. The continuous improvement approach suggests that employees have natural creativity that must be tapped into. It also acknowledges that the people who are closest to the organisation’s operating processes, the operation staff, generally know more about processes than anyone. (2) Radical improvements: are designed to provide a one-off, major advance changes in design, operating processes and practices, and with big investments of money and other resources, and rely on the introduction of new technology. Top managers have a reliance on radical improvements to achieve performance improvements. Radical improvement is likely to be effective when an organisation needs to completely change its performance to compete effectively or even just to survive. However it is often much more risky than continuous improvement, since it disrupts established ways of managing operations. Before thinking about improving your company’s operations, you should be aware of what to improve in the first place. Whether you are a service organisation or you are running a manufacturing firm, there are two ways in which the performance of service delivery might be improved. (1) Increased customer involvement Customer can become involved in designing the specification of the product/service, so that it can be customised to meet their particular needs and requirements (specification). Customers can also be used to perform some or all of the activities, such as service themselves from a restaurant (co-production). Customers become responsible for the quality of part of the operation, for example in assembling flat-pack furniture (quality control). (2) Increased use of customer feedback to improve service quality Service operations need to understand quality from the customer’s standpoint, and to identify where operations do not meet customer expectations. Ivoireconsultancy.org is an online outsourcing site where businesses and consultants meet to work on projects.Rocket French or Bust

Once an organization has come to understand how goods, products or services flow through each step of their value stream, they can then look to apply measurement techniques at various stages, to help identify where improvement opportunities exist. Identification however, is only an initial step in the improvement process, as prioritization of these opportunities must then follow to ensure that any improvement activities focus on the right projects, for the right reasons, at the right time for the organization.

As organizations begin to truly “learn” the activities they are performing, they will almost immediately realize that the numbers of improvement opportunities are far greater than anyone originally anticipated. This realization often comes as the result of applying quantitative (or even qualitative) measurement techniques, as stated above, and the analysis of the resulting data which often yields surprising, if not alarming, results. At this point, it’s not unusual for an organization to see improvement opportunities almost everywhere they look.

While this may be an exiting time for individuals that are involved in the improvement initiative, this is also a critical stage in the initiative’s evolution. For most organizations, resources are extremely scarce and managers are inherently skeptical; they are concerned with the potential impact to their production schedules and in many cases, to their bottom lines. Applying a system of prioritization to these newly discovered opportunities helps to prevent any misallocation of resources (i.e., for the right project at the wrong time) which could work to validate this sense of skepticism and may severely impact the creditability of a fledgling improvement effort.

Perceptions of urgency and importance should therefore be balanced in line with business needs and objectives, as well as financial and other considerations. Personal “pet projects” should be considered cautiously, to ensure that projects are selected based on their overall value to the organization. Such consideration should also extend to the project’s probability for success, as initial gains are vital to creating a sense of momentum around the initiative. In many organizations, projects that meet these criteria are referred to as “low hanging fruit”, because of their relative importance and ease of completion.

Continuous improvement is so-called because it is an iterative process; improvement activities are on-going, evolving and adapting. Process variance is identified, reduced, reduced further, and in the ideal case, ultimately eliminated. In order to effectively manage this process however, prioritization of improvement opportunities is necessary to ensure that improvement activities target the right projects in a sequence and manner that is consistent with the overall goals of the organization. Mark Randig is the President and Founder of MAS Solutions LLC., a Houston Texas based consulting firm that specializes in helping companies achieve breakthrough performance by focusing on Quality Enhancement and Productivity Improvement. To get your FREE copy of Mark’s newsletter “The Quality Specialist”, go to http://www.masquality.com.

Continuous process improvement is a systematic approach to achieve both incremental and breakthrough improvements in processes. This results in effective, better and more efficient ways in producing products or services.
Why is continuous process improvement important? The world is changing daily. If you do not keep up with the changes that are happening, you will soon find that you will not be able to keep up with the competition either.
By using continuous process improvement methods and techniques, you can determine if your business activities are the way to serve both your customers and organization.
However, you must realize that this is not a one time effort. If you want to achieve total customer satisfaction and increased sales, then continuous process improvement must be an ongoing initiative. It must become a way of life. Systematic application of continuous process improvement methods will result in it becoming second nature.
The key steps are
- Select
- Analyze
- Measure
- Improve
- Evaluate
1. Select
It is important to select the process that needs improvement. Choosing one that is already working well is a waste of time and money.
The process you choose should also be one that is important to meeting customers’ wants and needs and also be one that is critical to achieving your organization’s goals.
2. Analyze
You now need to understand how the process currently works and analyze it. This will require you to document the process as it is currently practised. This is also known as the “as is” process.
Identify all the process tasks and create a process flowchart. This will provide a visual drawing to help you to identify tasks that may not be adding value.
You will then need to decide what are the processes you want to measure.
3. Measure
Measurement is key to process improvement. If you cannot measure, you cannot manage effectively.
An initial baseline performance level must be established first. Then continue to measure the process. Only then can you determine if any improvement has happened.
Gathering baseline data is important as what you think it is and what it actually is can be quite different.
The process performance gaps need to be identified next. Non-value added tasks are an example. You will be able to identify other problem areas by reviewing your process flowchart.
Common problem areas are poor communication, lack of training, use of outdated processes, unclear responsibilities, lack of clear procedures, insufficient delegation of authority to operations personnel and lack of management availability to make key decisions.
4. Improve
Process goals must be set to increase the probability of success. Achieving goals also provides encouragement for the team and acts as a measure for management to recognize employee achievement.
By its very definition to achieve continuous process improvement, goals must be set and work must be done to meet them. Then set higher goals and continually improve on the way work is done to achieve them.
You need to find improvement needs based on the performance gaps that you would have uncovered earlier. Confirm desired process performance levels based on your customer needs. You must also decide on any supplier prerequisites to be able to meet these targets.
Now look back at your earlier analysis to identify the root causes of the process problems. Identify opportunities to streamline and modify the process. You can redesign the process to be more efficient by eliminating or simplifying steps. Or you can also modify steps within the process.
There will be a number of ideas that you might get. Decide on the best one depending on the impact it will have, the amount of funds that you have, the skills required and the resources it will require.
Get back to your original flowchart and note the changes you have made. This will give a clearer picture of how your changes will impact your process.
It is better to test your solutions and see if they work well. If you get good results, you can then go ahead and implement the changes.
It is important that data is gathered on all key process measures. This is the best way to determine if your process changes are resulting in improvements. If necessary, you may need to add new process measures.
5. Evaluate
It may seem that you have achieved process improvement, but your job is not done until you get all the data and feedback for use in evaluating the outcome.
This step is necessary to ensure that the root causes of your process problems are reduced or eliminated. You also need to confirm that your customer needs are satisfied.
Once you are satisfied that your initial efforts have been successful, it is now time to standardize it and monitor the ongoing improvement. This step is crucial to ensure that people do not return to their old way of doing things.
It is now time to communicate the improved process flow and documented procedures. Training on the improved processes need to be conducted if required. Importantly, data must continually be collected to measure and monitor to ensure that the improved process is maintained and if possible improved.
Once a changed process has been put in place, there is the question of when to disband the team. It is best to maintain the team till a point when the improved process has been well established and has become second nature to the people handling them. Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.Wordpress Autoblog Plugin

Continuing business model innovation is the most valuable process that any enterprise an engage in. But establishing the process is a problem for most leaders to take on. Why? They’ve never see anyone do it, and they have no personal experience.

To help overcome that problem, this article describes the key elements that such a process requires. With this template in mind, some leaders will be able to design and engage in the appropriate activities.

Here are the four elements in continuing business model innovation:

1. Understand and follow the current business model well. — Employ the optimum way that goods and services should be supplied now, by informing all stakeholders about what needs to be done to deliver the most benefits.

2. Understand and implement the next business model improvement. — Specify the next innovation to provide more stakeholder benefits through goods and services and how the transition will occur.

3. Understand and use a business model innovation vision. — The ideal benefits to deliver to stakeholders in your industry, which is used to test the appropriateness of developing future generations of potential business model innovations.

4. Ongoing design and testing of potential business model innovations. — Vision-defined probes and tests to elicit reactions to providing new benefits and various ways of supplying them.

A far more valuable approach to continual business model innovation also describes more than one future generation of innovations in terms of the second element.

For each of the first three elements of continuing business model innovations, you need to identify seven key elements — the who, what, when, where, why, how, and how much — viewed from the perspective of all direct and indirect stakeholders. Their combination of seven elements defines either a business model or a business model innovation vision:

1. “Who?” defines all the stakeholders you are serving or affecting.

2. “What?” describes the offerings and their benefits and negative influences that affect each stakeholder.

3. “When?” captures the timing of offerings’ effects on stakeholders.

4. “Where?” identifies the location for delivering the benefits and other impacts.

5. “Why?” gives the rationale for providing the stakeholder benefits you deliver.

6. “How?” explains your method of making your offerings available and being compensated for them.

7. “How much?” states the price customers and users pay and incur.

Why is it important to know what these seven elements are? By examining these areas, organizations will be able to focus on places where important benefits may be added.

Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved Donald Mitchell is chairman and CEO of Mitchell and Company, a strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for accomplishing 20 times more by registering at: www.2000percentsolution.comBest Smartphone Software