The Creation of Real Value and Meaningful Life - KAIZEN’s Mission and Key Elements for becoming a True World-Class Company

Many of us believe that, as employees, the work we are engaged in is valuable and that it will, after devoting long hours and expending hard effort, one day result in the creation of a unique product or manufacturing process. Regrettably, in too many cases this is a false belief. Rather than striving to create something new, we are, unaware, more or less replicating what exists already. Oftentimes this is the unfortunate consequence of not sharing information -- specifically, technological and conceptual information -- a situation that is ironic given the fact that we live in an information-bombarded society, surrounded by state-of-the-art technologies for finding knowledge.

Directing employees to produce something new, gives meaningful life to those workers. In contrast, spending long hours of arduous work to produce something that already exists in the marketplace (perhaps even better) is a waste of time and talent, and demoralizing to workers.

This is the tragedy of not sharing information, particularly technological and conceptual information.

We must change our way of thinking to focus our intellectual effort on improving the technology and products that we have, not creating more of the same.

For example, if you are building a new car, you must separate what should be done in and outside of the manufacturing cell in order to conduct a quick changeover. You should not attempt to start everything from scratch in the cell even if it is a new product. The effort should be focused on how to utilize the newest existing technological theory and standardized engineering.

Our mental effort should be concentrated on continuous improvement of technological theory, product standardization, and the standardization of engineering and functionality of products and components.

This is the approach that should be applied not only to the research & development department but also to production engineering, manufacturing process engineering, sales and marketing and manufacturing floor.

By addressing these issues, you will be able to minimize lead-time from new product research & development through mass production, reduce cost, maximize product quality and reliability and reduce the number of components that have to be managed. Employees truly desire to work, when they know they are contributing new and needed advancements, and thus you will achieve the high intensity, high-level work you seek. The forceful energy that touches other people’s hearts, the vitality that is contagious to others, will infuse your company and society.

This is my approach to the creation of Real Value and giving a person sense of worth. This is the purpose of KAIZEN to create a true World Class Company.

Yoshihisa Doi

April 23, 2005