Kaizen : It is a combination of two Japanese words , kai and zen . Kai means “Change” and Zen means “for the better” resulting in the meaning as “Change for the better”. It refers to any continuous improvement done in workplace, using small incremental changes
Kaikaku: It is the Japanese term for ‘ radical change’ . It talks about the fundamental cum radical changes that we make to the system, in which we are working
Kakushin: In Japanese it means ‘Innovation’ . It talks about the fact that changes done in the system (that we work upon) can sometimes lead to a paradigm shift in the working of the system such that that we need to realign our thinking to be more innovative
S.No
Kaizen
Kaikaku
Kakushin
1
Focuses on elimination of waste (Muda), Productivity improvement and Over hard working of employees (Muri ) with small continuous improvements
Focuses on radical or revolutionary changes with big improvements
Focuses on Breakthrough ideas /products /services
2
Cultural change is slowly imbibed into the working DNA of the employees .
Cultural change happens explicitly and drastically changes
Cultural change happens consciously due to focused thinking
3
Participation(involving in the activity) of all workers normally happens as kaizen activities deals with process kaizen (Individual workstands)and flow kaizen(material and information)
Not necessarily all workers need to be involved
Not necessarily all workers need to be involved
How do they complement each other ?
Kaizen is the base . Its the building block on top of which Kaikaku and Kakushin can be done.
Objective is to remove any non-value adding work by doing a kaizen and then see what needs to be done. When too many Kaizen activities are not yielding any results , then we go got Kaikaku. This is akin to DMAIC and DMADV. If we think that DMAIC is not going to work, then no point in trying to improve the existing process. So we opt for DMADV as we think old process cannot be improved. Same way, we move to Kaikaku and hence that becomes a radical shift in our approach (again think of DMADV for analogy). Now this is done . What next ? What if we find a better way to optimise our benefits . Our system then should be in a transformed state with our thought process realigned with innovative approach. So Kakushin comes into picture . This is akin to DMAODV in Six Sigma parlour.
Conclusion:All the three are a must so that an organisation can stay competitive in the market.
What would a company lose if one of these as a concept was not utilised?
Case 1: If Kaizen not utilised:
If thats the case, it would be like building a house without a strong base. Kaizen helps in setting up individual standards and also helps in eliminating waste/non-value added activities. Also it helps in controlling the over work of employees. By not having Kaizen, the disadvantages would be
a). Impact of other two type of improvements may not be effective as still the processes would be weak because non-value added activities would be present because those 2 improvement types may not have addressed this aspect
b). Kaikaku and Kakushin focus on system improvements primarily and will not focus on individual standards unlike Kaizen . As a result, employee focus would be missing
c). Employee morale may go down as cultural challenge is thrusted upon and as there is no Kaizen which speaks about Muri . Employee might spend long hours to adapt to the cultural changes brought by other 2 types of improvement
Case 2: If Kaikaku not utilised:
1. 1. Potentially it could happen that small changes might keep on happening eternally for ages with not much impact
2. Management/Key stakeholders may not be able to take decisions on issues/problems
Case 3: If Kakushin not utilised:
1. 1. The Organisation will not be competitive in its business
2. 2. Difficult to grow in niche market
3. Business growth and hence revenue will be stagnated
4. Morale of top management will go down
Example for Kaizen, Kaikaku, Kakushin:
Assuming we are in a primitive age of IT , explaining the concepts of Kaizen, Kaikaku and Kakushin
Problem Statement
Before Kaizen
Kaizen
Results
Often multiple developers working on same code/functionality creates instability and also delays deployment of files
Code written by one developer is inadvertently overwritten by another. This happens at times on the delivery date creating customer escalation
Have a Version Control System which will alleviate the problems
Version control eliminates overwriting. Latest code is always used for delivery and right file is deployed eliminating customer escalation
Now Version control available . Next issue.
Problem Statement
Before Kaikaku
Kaikaku
Results
As more than one developer working on same file and multiple files, changes need to be frequently deployed in the code repository which is not happening
Due to time pressure , code deployed in the code repository throws error while testing the application . Tester would not be able to test in such a case
Do a Continuous Integration (CI).
Have an Integration Server which can seamlessly integrate all codes and provide a build (compilation of the code –ready for consumption by the users) and also intimate whether build is failed or passed
Tester and Developer can get notification about the success or failure state. It makes easy for testers to test
In today’s environment , Time to Market is the key. So the sooner we make the changes , the faster we should deploy it in the production environment . Else business would be lost.
Now as we frequently make changes and deploy it in our local environment and test the application, do we have the capacity to deploy those changes in real time(production environment?)
Problem Statement
Before Kakushin
Kakushin
Results
As frequent changes are done to the code and tested in local environment , it becomes difficult to deploy the changes everytime in production as the environments are different and we need to make changes in various places including code so that northing gets broken in production
Takes 2 days of effort to do the manual changes .
Also the stress in doing these changes (staying at office for long hrs) takes its toll on the health of the individual .
More SMEs required to do this job since its for more than 1 day
Automate the deployment part
Avoids manual effort for deploying the changes
1 SME who knows automation is alone required
If automation sequence is done properly, no mental stress or boredom will happen