More Indian firms turn to Kaizen to cut waste

Slowdown sees two-fold increase in inquiries.

The recent slowdown has seen an increasing number of companies turning towards Kaizen – the Japanese approach to business and one of the widely practiced management philosophies throughout the world.

The technology, founded by management guru Masaaki Imai for eliminating waste and using leaner processing methods has seen a two-fold increase in inquiries in the last one year and about 25 per cent rise in its Indian business. Kaizen when translated into English means continuing improvements.

“Two years ago it was difficult to convince a CEO for driving improvements in the organization. Today, however it is time to listen to change in strategy,” said Jayant Murthy, one of the three directors of Kaizen Institute – India and Africa.

The Kaizen Institute was formed in India in 2000 with offices at Delhi, Pune, and Ahmedabad.

According to Murthy, the Kaizen approach is in lines with the philosophy of Toyota Motor Corporation’s, a company that enjoys higher net profit as compared to those of the three top car manufacturing companies in the world.

He explained that Kaizen is a business strategy involving everyone, at every level and across every function in the organization, working together. To attain this objective, available tools are used to eliminate all wasteful activities aimed at improving total business performance through sustainable implementation for sustainable profits.

The Kaizen Management System addresses all aspects that contribute to company results including quality, costs, logistics, staff motivation, safety, technology and environment. The entire process chain – from supplier via the internal customer to the final customer is therefore taken into consideration.

“In most of the companies, about 70-80 per cent is waste and this needs to be cut. The difference in cost of conversion after implementing Kaizen process is about 30 per cent while the modest figure for reduction in cost of operation is 6-7 per cent,” said Murthy.

Kaizen has 30 consultants on board and has catered to over 250 clients including Gujarat government, Reliance Industries, Zydus Cadila, ABB Limited, Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited, Asian Paints, Electrotherm, Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce, Godrej Consumer Products Limited, Deepak Nitrite, Crompton Greaves, ISPAT Industries, Indian Oil Corporation, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Navneet Publications, ITC Limited, Sterling Exports, Thermax Limited, Suzlon, Arvind Mills and Raymond Limited.

Kaizen helps clients to initiate immediate organizational change by using creative and practical solutions through various Kaizen tools and Total Systems Improvement program, to achieve client specific and on going strategic growth. While Kaizen is frequently thought of in the context of small workshop and activities, KAIZEN Institute uses a strategic approach to help its clients move beyond the techniques with JIT, Kanban System Value Stream Mapping, or even Six Sigma.

Zydus has named its Kaizen initiative as Strategic Lean Integrated Management. The company saw some dramatic changes in its generic drug manufacturing facility at Moraiya like its cellular flow capacity rising to 100 million against about 20 million earlier, the distance travelled by a batch reducing drastically and the yield going up to 99.6 percent.