The Richwood Report

A helpful article here about kaizen and how it is best implemented in an organization. Here's the link. You will need Adobe Acrobat to open the link. A sample:

Kaizen is inextricably linked with waste. Of course, waste (or muda) reduction is an aim of Lean. Womack and Jones’ Lean Thinking opens with “Muda. It’s the one word of Japanese that you really must know”. As a result there is the perception that Lean is waste elimination. It is, but beware, it is only Lean if waste elimination is focused and appropriate. By focused means focused on flow. Peter Drucker says there is no greater waste than making a product that nobody wants. Appropriate means that some waste elimination may itself be a waste! Consider the high jump event at the Olympics. The leading technique for high jump was once the scissors. Then the Western Roll. Then along came Dick Fosbury who invented the ‘Fosbury Flop’ that broke all the rules by going over the bar backwards and back first. Today all aspiring gold medal high jumpers use the Fosbury Flop. Users of the western roll can continue kaizening but they will never be world class. In retrospect, it is pity that Womack and Jones did not start their seminal book with ‘Flow. It’s the one word that you really need to understand.’

There are other good articles on the same page. Check them out!