KAIZEN : Applications to Research Laboratories

KAIZEN

Dr. Anand S. Burange

In industries, now a days KAIZEN is an important part of Manufacturing Excellence abbreviated as MEx.

KAIZEN is not any tool, its rather a culture which starts with employee and should come from within him/her. KAIZEN is Japanese word where ‘KAI’ and ‘ZEN’ stands for ‘Change’ and ‘Good’ respectively. If we consider any business and we are thinking for its excellence; which (business) is classified into two major categories namely strategic, includes business planning and operational, deals with the execution of work. Manufacturing Excellence comes under operational excellence which includes addition and deletion (deletion of unnecessary things).

One of the terminologies under Mex is a LEAN i.e. result of a practicing KAIZEN.

KAIZEN, also includes a bottle neck approach which takes long time during entire process.

Do all improvements come under KAIZEN?

The answer to above question is NO.

All improvements are not at all Kaizen. The improvements which satisfy customer is a Kaizen which is a result of developed culture in a company. The collective habits of individuals decide the culture of a company.

Our biggest drawback in practice:

The major problem with us is, we don’t ask question and accept everything as it is. It happened with us often because our mind is conditioned by previously faced problems. Moreover, everyone has his/her own paradigm. For most of us “My paradigm is THE PARADIGM.” We must take this sentence as a warning and need to change this mentality. Being a part of system for long time, it is difficult for us to see the defects around therefore we need ‘third eye.’ Therefore, paradigm shift is usually brought by outsiders or a newer one. It is not so easy as it seems. It needs lot of courage to make a shift in paradigm. Shift in paradigm, is nothing but doing work in a different way/style. To accept any change, open mindedness is must. Most of the time, when a new comer to the system, who wants to bring the paradigm shift is often become of prey of seniors believing in ageism.

Principles of Kaizen

There are five major principles of Kaizen.

1. Create customer Value

The first and most important part of Kaizen is to create a customer value (understand customer’s perception) by using following principles.

2. Eliminate Waste

The second important principle is to Eliminate Waste. The meaning of Waste is Kaizen is vast and divided into three parts namely MUDA, MURA and MURI. The meaning of these three terms are given below.

MUDA (No Money): It is the activity which does not add any value.

In MUDA, eight non value added activities are represented well by using term DOWNTIME.

D         Defect

O         Over-production

W        Waiting

N         Non-utilized resources

T          Transportation (when material move)

I           Inventory in excess

M        Motion (when people move)

E          Excess processing.

MURA (No Stripes): Any inconsistent activity

MURI (No Logic): Any activity which involves unnecessary physical strain

In order to avoid such wastes, changes are mandatory. It is said that, the rate of change in the organization should be higher than the rate of change in the market.

 3. Engage people

It involves engaging people effectively. The employee most of the times do not share their problems due to bossy approach of their seniors and sometimes due to inferiority feelings. To engage people effectively, one must learn to welcome the problems.

4. Go to GEMBA

In Kaizen, GEMBA mean the real place (GEM:Real; BA: Place) where the problem has occurred. For instance, if we are not feeling well and we are just telling about us to doctor over telephone will not serve well. If you go to clinic, then doctor can physically examine you. In this case clinic is a GEMBA. If you are a doctor and you want to examine a patient, for that doctor need some basic equipment like stethoscope. The equipment or any necessary thing which will be used to work for the problem is known as GEMBUTSU.

In nutshell, go to GEMBA where the real problem has occurred with GEMBUTSU and check GEMBUTSU before leaving to GEMBA. The main aim of going to GEMBA is to do the root cause analysis of the occurred problems and the implement the standard measures.

5. Manage PDCA Cycle

In PDCA:

P, D, C and A stand for Plan, Do, Check and Act respectively. The aspects that come under PDCA are enlisted below:

P: Planning involves study of target, policy making and resource planning.

D: Doing, training and root cause analysis.

C: Counter measures, monitoring and implementation

A: Standardization.

  

In KAIZEN, workplace management plays vital role for change in any organization. One of the widely used industrial work-place management system is 5S. 5S stands for five different words starting with letter ‘S’ namely SEIRI, SEITON, SEISO, SEIKETSU and SHITSUKE.

SEIRI

Word ‘SEIRI’ stands for sort. In this sorting of the things are done by using following:

Needed or not needed???

Needed but not here…

Needed but not now….

Needed but not this much….

The things which are not needed or unidentified is placed one special area under SEIRI named as ‘Red Tag Area.’

Team should make a schedule for sorting ag GEMBA where the unrequired material should be kept near entrance so that higher authority of an organization can take faster decision for the same.

SEITON

SEITON means systematic arrangement which follows ten golden rules as follows:

[1] Search free  [2] Count free  [3] Climb free  [4] Bend free  [5] Air free  [6] Choke free  [7] Dark free  [8] Lighter item on top  [9] First in first out (FIFO)  [10] Point of used storage e.g. F (Frequently), O (Ocassionally) and R (Rarely).

SEISO

SEISO includes shining and cleaning.

SEIKETSU

SEIKETSU stands for standardization.

SHITSUKE

SHITSUKE means self-discipline. This part of 5S needs an audit.

KAIZEN FOR RESEARCHERS: Applications to Research Laboratories

How can we use KAIZEN in research laboratory for an effective out-come? As described in KAIZEN, we must start our research program with an open mind and at the same time as a research supervisor, we must welcome the problems and ideas from the young researchers, trainees and research scholars. In research programs, the common problem faced by many research scholars is nothing but MUDA of waiting. For instance, most of the time, research supervisors don’t respond to queries by scholars, do not approve their chemicals to order in time. Moreover, this MUDA of waiting is also seen in correcting and giving valuable comments to manuscripts, etc.

In DOWNTIME under heading MUDA, ‘D’ stands for defect. Sometimes, it is clear to see the flaws in the used process but same process is followed blindly. This type of defect also affects the effective out come of a research.

MURI (Physical Strain) in research is an important factor where individual researcher or research scholar can work on. In our daily schedule, we know chemicals, instruments and glass wares required for our project. To reduce the physical strain, we can keep our required materials nearby to access easily without wasting time and energy.

One can apply almost all the sections of KAIZEN discussed above to research laboratory. The most important is to have a courage to make a shift in paradigm by working differently.