Page 310 - (DK) The Business Book

308 KAIZEN

to remove the divide between for every $1.60 (£1) the business
managers and workers, the spent on quality circles,
underlying philosophy being Wedgwood’s costs fell by $4.85 (£3).
that managers, supervisors, and Another business that has
assembly-line workers should employed kaizen techniques to
learn, discover, teach, grow, and good effect is India-based Tata
make improvements together. Steel. The company made
improvements to the productivity of
Kaizen in action its gear-cutting machinery, which
One of the first British companies led to increased production.
to adopt quality circles was the
pottery company, Wedgwood. From The antithesis of kaizen
1980 onward, 80 quality circles A very different approach from
representing different parts of the kaizen is Business Process
business met for an hour a week. Reengineering (BPR). This is based
Each quality circle was empowered on infrequent—but very capital-
to identify its own problem, which heavy—investment programs that
it then spent up to six months are designed to create a great leap Investment in robots in the
solving. The solution devised by forward in terms of productivity, workplace can be a large-scale, costly
the circle was presented to the reductions in unit costs, or undertaking, which frequently results
in job losses. This sort of BPR activity
management and most were improvements in product quality.
can alienate the work force.
approved and then implemented. Unlike kaizen, companies that use
Employee motivation improved, BPR do not endeavor to make
which increased productivity. In regular small changes. Instead the a period of stability follows, until
addition, employee ideas reduced goal is to radically rethink the complacency sets in again, and the
costs by cutting the amount of whole production process every five next crisis arrives, and prompts
clay and paint wasted during the years or so to make it more efficient. another round of BPR.
production process. According to Typically, this is in response to Rather than approaching
Dick Fletcher, the man who led a crisis. Once the company using employees for ideas that lead to
Wedgwood’s quality circle program, BPR has caught up with its rivals, improvements in efficiency,
companies that use BPR only use
ideas that originate from managers
The effects of kaizen and BPR on and highly qualified consultants.
productivity are shown here over a
30-year time span. Overall, kaizen Kaizen The work force is relatively passive:
change is imposed from the top
OUTPUT PER WORKER (PRODUCTIVITY) followed by periods of flat growth. that use this approach often try to
increases output with consistent steady
and often includes large-scale
improvements while BPR brings a series
of sharper boosts to productivity
layoffs. This is because companies
BPR
boost efficiency by investing in
automated production systems that
replace labor with capital. Those
that favor kaizen argue that it is
better to try to improve efficiency
by making small but regular
changes, rather than by instigating
less frequent but more radical BPR
changes. In competitive markets,
companies that rely on BPR
struggle to match the less dramatic
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
but steadier growth achieved by
YEARS kaizen. Companies using BPR can