R Rajesh

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

Measurement is essential for good management. Why do we need Measurement ? Various reasons can be attributed to this. 1. Having a quantitative/measurable data , helps in seeing the progress of improvement of the said activity(say CTQ/Metric/ parameters in a dashboard ) 2. Its easy to compare the current performance (AS-IS) with the TO-BE performance and portray the difference gained ,to the key stakeholders 3. Quantitative/Measurable data will provide transparency for all to discuss and debate 4. Quantitative/Measurable data can also imply naturally, the time in which the data was taken. This will provide a clue as how long an issue/scenario was existing 5. Quantitative/Measurable data Now we know the reasons . Let us also focus on how to efficiently measure data and also see the challenges in measuring the data. How do we achieve efficient measuring data ? 1. A metric/CTQ/Parameters of a dashboard should be defined such that it should follow ‘SMART’ rule. 2. A general dictum is to have a Continuous data for a variable which needs to be measured. The reason being with continuous data , there would be more data to analyze or find a trend as how things are going. Sufficient data would be there to take decisions/arrive at solutions. For instance, rather than saying whether students passed or failed, its better to say how many students passed . Similarly , customers could be more interested to know about the no.of defects failed, rather than a mere status on pass/fail Challenges in measuring data: 1. There should be a proper measuring system in place to measure your data 2. The measuring system should be highly calibrated such that you are able to measure your data at the unit level desired by you Exceptions There could be some exception cases, where measurement might be difficult or not suffice. In such a case an approximation (close to reality) should be done. Eg: There could be intangible metrics/factors. Say for instance, if you are having a dashboard for Customer Satisfaction Survey and one of the parameters happen to be ‘Feel Good Factor’ , then it can be difficult to measure. The answer can be say, “good, “bad”,” excellent”. If it is deemed as “bad” , then tracking the data going forward, so that it changes to “Excellent” in the nearby future would remain a challenge. View on Deming’s Quote 1. Dr.Deming devised a list of 7 deadly diseases(statements made out by him) which portrayed how numerical/measurable data were misused generously by management teams/key stakeholders in organisations/industries, government institutions and other institutions in America, to satisfy their needs. 2. In an organisation , management/Key stakeholders would focus on the number aspects. They would worry about the end results . But they would not understand the means for achieving that and would not bother to know how they are measured. This is one of Dr.Deming’s list of 7 deadly diseases which captures this. Below is the message related to this. “Management by use only of visible figures, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable”

Generic Definition: Necessary means something needed. Sufficiency - an amount of something that is enough for a particular purpose 1). A cause may be necessary but not sufficient for a problem to occur: This means that the problem did/do not arise because of a single cause. There could be multiple causes which could lead to the problem Eg: An Application running in the system is responding very slowly. We could think that it could be due to less memory space in hard disk/RAM . But it may not be the only reason. It could be due to too many applications opened up thereby busying the CPU. It could also be because of some heavy processes running in the background or any other reasons. So our approach should be: a). To find out what other causes could be there which can make the problem to occur. b). Do try to drill down with 5-Why analysis or tree analysis of the problem or make Fishbone analysis and find out the other causes/category of causes. 2). A cause may be sufficient but not necessary for a problem to happen: This implies that a particular cause can be a potential source for the problem to occur but not necessarily be the primary one which will create the problem. Eg: If System "Welcome Screen" (logging in) taking time is a problem, then increasing the RAM size may be useful but it may not necessarily be increasing the speed as still the Processor CPU/Processor Speed(Frequency) could need to be addressed. There could be some more ways which can make this speed increased to Our approach should be : a). Find out the ways to have necessary conditions and satisfy sufficiency 3). A cause may be neither sufficient nor necessary for a problem to occur This portrays the fact that you are aware of the causes and have sufficient and needed information to resolve.But still there is a better workaround to ensure that problem does not occur Eg: You/Your organisation has technical challenge on Non Functional requirements and you think you know the causes and has sufficient and needed knowledge. However It will take 2 months of time for your team to complete this . But management outsources this to expedite this activity. So the approach should be a). To make effective use of the alternative method/approach that is being planned out for the problem. 4). A cause may be both sufficient and necessary for a problem to occur This means that initial assumptions are made on the necessity and sufficiency of causes, for a problem. Eg: If the problem is the smelling(bad odour) of Septic tank of the house, then immediately the assumption is made that the tank could be full and hence the smell is arising. So our approach would be : a). To validate as much as you can to ensure that the assumptions made are true. If not, then course correction needs to be done b). Depending on the assumptions , we need to proceed. If assumptions are false, then follow one of the approaches from the remaining 3 options/conditions

Excellence : Excellence is defined as the quality of being extremely good So what is Personal excellence? In simple words, setting up the bar higher [benchmark] in whatever activities, the individual(who is compared with the rest) does. Process Excellence: Providing an environment where the processes are highly stable and controlled with a minimal or no variation and with minimum or no wastage(Muda). Focus is on continuous improvement to ensure processes are highly stablized Operational Excellence: It reflects the way how as a person, unit, you or your team/organisation excel at parameters such as Cost, Human Resources, scope, time, quality etc.,. By excelling at this, the provider of a service, can provide value to the customer with optimal/maximum efficiency. Business Excellence: It is through which you make your business, with effective strategies ,efficient business plans , best business practices so that optimal results are achieved at a sustained rate. How each one is related to the other one(s): Personal Excellence is directly tied to Process Excellence. If and only if the individual is interested to adhere to the processes laid out, then process excellence or for that matter any other activity can be successful . If the cultural shift/mindset is not there amongst the individual/team , then no change would work. This can be represented by the formula : Quality of the solution (Q) * Acceptance of the solution (A) = Effectiveness of the solution (E). Unless there is an acceptance to any thing (which is the human part) nothing can be done. So if the individual has the desire to excel at his/her work, then he/she would strive to make sure he/she/the organization achieve Process Excellence. Process Excellence provides a way for continuous improvement. Purpose of process excellence is to streamline all the processes , make them stable and in the process to achieve minimal degree of variation and minimal wastage. By having a process excellence system in place, grey areas in Operational excellence and Business excellence can be identified and improved/rectified upon. Practically it is difficult to achieve excellence in one when another one is absent. For instance, Business and Operational excellence would require process improvements. If streamlining does not happen there then there is no excellence in Business and in Operational aspects as well.Similarly without human intervention or the elevated mindset of the individual, it becomes difficult to successfully run the processes at a top-notch. From an organisation perspective, the organisation should Provide a conducive environment to work with wherein by individuals can be encouraged to share their ideas/thoughts and create a transparency, making them feel belonging to the organisational/unit's problems/constraints (Personal Excellence) Encourage individuals to showcase their creativity in designing/providing solutions to problems (Personal Excellence) Create Challenging contests and rewarding people on various categories such as best creativity,best solution, optimal solution,... (Personal Excellence) Setup process standards and metrics for each parameter(Define the expectation).Set the Upper & Lower limit & also customer specification limits (Process Excellence) Conduct awareness sessions on process expectations with reasoning and justifications. Provide details with SMART goals (Process Excellence) Ensure that individuals/teams adhere to the standards with constant monitoring through Audits/Inspections/reviews. (Process Excellence) Look out for scope for continuous improvements periodically and accordingly adjust the process baseline if required. (Process Excellence) Define the Operational parameters that requires excellence. (Operational Excellence) Conduct awareness sessions to key stakeholders on those operational parameters and provide the plan on when and how to achieve them (Operational Excellence) Ensure the status of operational excellence through Project Management Reviews/status reports and other similar artefacts and address the deviations (Operational Excellence). Preserve the best practices that were followed to achieve Operational Excellence (Operational Excellence) Define the strategies/plans needed for improving the business results (Business Excellence) Define the best practices in getting business-oriented goals/activities done (Business Excellence) Conduct Confidential meeting with key stakeholders and provide the envisaged plan to them and convey your expectation (Business Excellence) Conduct monthly/quarterly review meetings with respective units and look onto the 4-quarter dashboard. (Business Excellence) Get Business Mgmt section of Customer Satisfaction Survey from the customer to see if organisation is in target with its objective (Business Excellence) Document the outcome of the business results and the effective means to achieve them (Business Excellence)