Kaizen (改善) combines kai ("change") and zen ("good"). Change for the better. In practice it is a habit: every operator, every day, sees waste and improves the process by a small amount. Over a year, thousands of tiny improvements compound into a factory that looks nothing like it did.
Innovation is a leap, a new machine, a new line, a new product. Kaizen is a slope, continuous, gradual, cumulative. Both matter, but organizations that rely only on innovation get stuck between big projects. Organizations that master Kaizen improve every single day, whether or not a project is running.
Structured Kaizen events (sometimes called Kaizen blitzes) take a cross-functional team offline for a few days to redesign a specific area. Daily Kaizen is smaller: an operator suggestion box, a short standup at a Kaizen board, PDCA cycles run at the team level. The best systems combine both, events for big changes, daily practice for the rest.
Kaizen only works when it is safe to say "this is broken." That means leaders who respond to problems with curiosity rather than blame, and standards that are treated as the current best-known method rather than the final answer.
A quality philosophy that aims to prevent defects rather than detect or correct them later. It emphasizes doing the work correctly the first time, every time, and building quality into every process.
A philosophy focused on ongoing enhancements in products, processes, and organizational activities to exceed customer expectations while minimizing waste.
The documented best-known method for safely performing a task using the correct sequence, timing and inventory.
A Japanese term meaning "big room." In lean manufacturing, an Obeya is a dedicated space where cross-functional teams come together to share information, monitor performance, solve problems, and make decisions using shared visual information.
