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Writer's pictureHatsuo Yamada

The essence of Kaizen

Updated: May 29, 2022



自我 Ego


I want to think seriously about Kaizen. So this time, it's an 改善, not カイゼン、Kaizen.


I usually explain that eliminating waste is Kaizen.

As much as possible, I avoid expressions that are too difficult to understand in the sense of lowering the hurdle.


The improvement of the production site is dominated by a space of serious competition that is highly stoic and strict. It's a serious game. They enter a 1 mm, 1 mm comma, 1-second, and 1-second comma. Kaizen people are earnest. So you can feel a sense of accomplishment. It's a serious game.


They have an image of their predecessor's "cutting waste" in their heads and aim for the ultimate, but if they haven't reached that point yet, they will aim for the future.


What is Kaizen? In the case of manufacturing, the purpose is to deliver value to those who enjoy the goods and services that they make and provide. It's about maximizing value. The pursuit of more pure value is to remove everything but value.


The starting point is to consider the value that our customers need seriously. If you consider only the value of one wealthy customer, it is not a wrong idea to pursue only the quality, including the product's attractiveness, without paying attention to gold.

Given the satisfaction of many customers, it is important to balance quality and quantity and set prices that are as easy to buy as possible.


I will return to waste again.

I want to scrape off all the waste. If you eliminate all waste, it will only be the value you want. The essence of improvement is here.


When we say "eliminate waste", we think seriously about waste and come up with the idea that "waste is necessary!". We are not discussing that dimension here.


Imagine the process of making things. The process is so long, I wondered why it took so long, and when I looked closely, I thought that there were a lot of intermediate products in the factory, which caused the customers to bear extra costs. It's ridiculous.

It is helpful to follow how the materials and parts are changing.

The materials arrive at the factory and are stored in the material storage area for a month. It's been a month since the materials moved from that place to another place. The worker is just checking the result of the work of the previous worker.

The improvement is to find and eliminate such waste.


Here, the story jumps up. "What is the ego?" Dr Tomabechi was expressed in a mathematical formula.


Expressed in words, it is an evaluation function that is necessary or not necessary for me.

Explained above. Other than the added value, if you replace it with "For customers ...", it means "It is necessary or not necessary for customers." In other words, it is not necessary.


Universe (x: important, y: not important) ⇨ ego

Universe (x: needed, y: not needed) ⇨ Kaizen



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