Kaizen, which translates to "improvement" in Japanese, is one of the basic concepts of lean production. It focuses on eliminating waste and increasing productivity through incremental changes in a ...

I first encountered the concept of kaizen in the early 1980s through the teaching of Masaaki Imai and later through his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. Imai explained that the ...

THE word Kaizen is translated from Japanese to mean "continuous improvement." Kaizen events are an organized team effort to improve reliability of a process, reduce setup/lead times, streamline a ...

Kaizen events, which are short-term continuous improvement events designed to improve an area or a process, are key to many manufacturing plants' lean efforts. At the recent IndustryWeek Best Plants ...

With hospitals feeling the pressure to improve efficiency and lower costs, some are implementing the Kaizen method to streamline processes. Kaizen is among a number of process improvement strategies ...

Line 4 at W.R. Grace's Chicagoland plant had an objective: to reduce changeover times by 50%. This goal was in response to a new W.R. Grace plant slated to open in Tennessee, which would result in the ...

I talked to Bob Arndt, the Vice President of Lean Supply Chain Solutions at Ryder. Ryder is a leading 3PL. I talked to Bob about Ryder’s use of Lean programs to continuously improve warehousing ...

Lean process improvement methodologies are finding their place not just in manufacturing but in the clinical setting, where removing inefficiencies benefits not only the hospital but the patients ...