Kaizen is the heart of Lean Manufacturing (also known as the Toyota Production System). Toyota states: "...based on the concept of continuous improvement, or Kaizen, every Toyota team member is empowered with the ability to improve their work environment. This includes everything from quality and safety to the environment and productivity. Improvements and suggestions by team members are the cornerstone of Toyota's success.

Kaizen is a system that involves every employee - from upper management to the cleaning crew. Everyone is encouraged to come up with small improvement suggestions on a regular basis. This is not a once a year, or monthly activity. It is continuous. At Japanese companies, such as Toyota and Canon, 60 to 70 suggestions per employee, per year are written down, shared and implemented
In most cases these are not ideas for major changes. Kaizen is based on making little changes on a regular basis--always improving productivity, safety and effectiveness, and reducing waste

Western philosophy can be summarized as, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." The Kaizen philosophy is that everything, even if it ain't broke, can be improved.

Benifits:

Kaizen Reduces Waste in areas such as inventory, waiting times, transportation, worker motion, employee skills, over production, and excess processing;

Kaizen Improves space utilization, product quality, use of capital, communications, production capacity and employee retention;

Kaizen Provides immediate results. Instead of focusing on large, capital intensive improvements, Kaizen focuses on creative investments that continually solve large numbers of small problems. Large, capital projects and major changes will still be needed, and Kaizen will also improve the capital projects process, but the real power of Kaizen is in the on-going process of continually making small improvements that improve processes and reduce waste.