Building Support for Kaizen Training

All people take pride in their work. A lot of people say they don’t, but we all want to feel useful, skilled, and knowledgeable. This should always be a consideration when creating and implementing an on-the-job training program. Training can be looked at two different ways. Employees can see it as an opportunity to expand their skillsets and advance their careers, or they can see it as an indictment of their current skill and way of working. Trainers always need to aim for the former response. This is especially true for Kaizen training. Kaizen is a Japanese word that means to continuously improve the way you work, from day to day, and in small increments. If trainees can’t see this as an opportunity to advance themselves, they will not be able to truly grasp the Kaizen concept.

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For starters, it is often said that “Kaizen comes from within.” That might sound like a lot of new-age mumbo-jumbo, but it serves a very practical purpose. Anyone who has tried to reform a workplace knows that improvements dictated from above rarely stick. Not only is it harder to get support for such improvement initiative, they are also harder for employees to learn, remember, and sustain. If, on the other hand, employees discover problems and implement solutions using their own expertise, they will develop improvements that they understand and support from the inside out.

Even if you just set out to “do some 5S”, Kaizen training is important. Kaizen is not just another tool in the Lean tool belt; it is a vital element of every Lean methodology. If you are conducting Lean training for TPM, SMED, or the more well-known 5S, you will need a foundation of Kaizen to build your program upon. No Lean system can sustain itself without Kaizen. To sustain a program in the Lean sense is not just about maintaining the standards; it is about improving and building upon the standards. If employees view training as a long detention in a classroom, they will not develop the engaged and self-motivated mindset that makes continuous improvement possible.

Lean and its underlying philosophy of Kaizen support and develop standards, but that doesn't mean that these improvement methodologies themselves are a standard process. Every company is different, and knowing yourself, your team, and your objectives is a prerequisite for the kind of company Kaizen culture that Lean organizations demand. Who wouldn’t want to work for a company where everyone is encouraged to give their input and change for the better?