Kaizen Blitz is an improvement workshop that was crafted to produce an approach to discrete process issues in just a few days. It is a more effective way so that teams within an organization can carry out a structured and creative problem solving and process improvement in a workshop environment in just a very short period of time.
When to use it?
The Kaizen Blitz can be useful in the agile industry. It can greatly help to improve the business process and projects in just a few weeks. With it, you can get the chance to attain a high level of commitment from those who are involved. Even more important, you can also focus more on having a practical as well as implementable solutions to specific problems that you may encounter in some future time. Moreover, with the Kaizen Blitz, there will also be a high level of management commitment that will be implemented as soon as possible.
When not to use it?
Always remember that Kaizen Blitz is not a “silver bullet”. It also has its own limitations especially in terms of complex, extensive as well as cross-functional systems. In this case, there is a possibility that you will not be able to formulate a systematic, true as well as root cause within a week.
To mention a few, the following are some of the possible problems that you may encounter when the usefulness of Blitz is unlikely.
- Lacking management support
- Insufficient sustainability after the event
- Interruption in implementation after the event
- Superficial training due to lack of time which results in poor understanding of Lean principles
- Lack of data to formulate an effective analysis of root causes
- Insufficient buy-in for proposed changes which come from those who are not involved in the event
On the other hand, there is also a risk in the Kaizen Blitz. It highly needs more amount of time in order to learn the principles, design methodology as well as tradeoffs. As a matter of fact, the general process is not as easy as what others might think. With this, it should be done with extra carefulness.
Concrete Examples
A great example of Kaizen Blitz is in a manufacturing industry. In the workplace, the level of stress is increasing among the employees. It is due to the higher work space, long hours of work, lack of resources, doing work for absent teammates as well as the blame for quality faults.
In this case, problems that emphasized the stress can be majorly caused by the layout of the workplace as well as the insufficiency of tools and equipment. Well, the best solution to reduce the stress is the cooperation in creating the change process, the team’s organization as well as the great support from the management.
With the use of Kaizen Blitz, you can create an excellent design, analysis, as well as a re-arrangement of the specific product. It can be implemented in estimated 2 to 10 days. The good thing about the Kaizen Blitz is that it produces more affirmative results that can generate enthusiasm and satisfaction with the organization’s team.
— Slimane Zouggari