What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. Kaizen was originally introduced to the West by Masaaki Imaiin his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success in 1986. Today Kaizen is recognized worldwide as an important pillar of an organization’s long-term competitive strategy. Kaizen is continuous improvementthat is based on certain guiding principles:
Kaizen, also known as continuous improvement, is a long-term approach to work that systematically seeks to achieve small, incremental changes in processes in order to improve efficiency and quality. Kaizen can be applied to any kind of work. If a work environment practices kaizen, continuous improvement is the responsibility of every worker, not just a selected few.
Good processes bring good results
Go see for yourself to grasp the current situation
Speak with data, manage by facts
Take action to contain and correct root causes of problems
Work as a team
Kaizen is everybody’s business
And much more!

One of the most notable features of kaizen is that big results come from many small changes accumulated over time. However this has been misunderstood to mean that kaizen equals small changes. In fact, kaizen means everyone involved in making improvements. While the majority of changes may be small, the greatest impact may be kaizens that are led by senior management as transformational projects, or by cross-functional teams as kaizen events.

KAI = CHANGE
ZEN = GOOD
"CHANGE FOR THE BETTER"
Kaizen = Continuous Improvement
...by Everybody! Every day! Everywhere!