A complete guide to running productive Kaizen events

In life and business, we fear change, but change is necessary for progress. People and organizations that embrace change are usually better positioned to face the future and adapt to new environments. So how can organizations make change a part of their culture? Many businesses successfully use the Kaizen methodology to make continuous changes that improve their brands, processes, and products. 

Kaizen is a Japanese word that means “change for the better,” and it is synonymous with continuous improvement and the lean methodology. The goal of Kaizen is to make incremental improvements to a business that lead to measurable outcomes. A Kaizen event is a five-day workshop designed to tackle a specific problem with the Kaizen methodology. 

When organizations implement Kaizen correctly, their teams solve important business problems and prevent processes from being stuck in the status quo. 

Improving more than just processes with Kaizen

Kaizen requires a mindset shift for most organizations, and its benefits go beyond simply solving a problem or improving a process. Here are a few of the benefits that Kaizen can help organizations achieve: 

1. Improved teamwork: An essential part of running an effective Kaizen event is assembling a cross-functional team. This will provide feedback from unique perspectives and give the team the best chance of developing innovative solutions. Additionally, working with people from different departments will help the team realize the value of collaboration.
2. A mindset that embraces change: Continuous improvement is a mindset shift. The Kaizen methodology reduces the intimidation of change by presenting it to employees in a manageable way and making it a normal part of their workflow.
3. Discovery of process inefficiencies: With a cross-functional team working together on business problems, you’ll likely uncover hidden problems and inefficiencies. These discoveries can lead to even more improvements in your organization. Employees also gain a holistic understanding of the company’s operations by working with people from different departments.
4. Cultural momentum: When teams achieve improvements through Kaizen events and share their success within the organization, it motivates other teams to look for improvements. This excitement can have a snowball effect within your organization.
5. Better future events: Practice makes perfect with Kaizen events. By working to perfect your implementation of this workshop, you’ll identify what works and what doesn’t. Documenting these details for your team will help improve the quality of your events. 

Kaizen’s organizational benefits are just the icing on the cake. But solving the problem you created the event to address is still the most important outcome. How can you organize your events to achieve that goal? It starts with the charter. 

Setting yourself up for success: Establishing a charter

Imagine that you started on a road trip to a new place without a map or GPS. You would likely get lost and perhaps run out of time to reach your destination. Similarly, running a Kaizen event without a charter may cause your team to miss out on its intended goals and lead to frustration. 

Your event charter should clearly outline the main aspects of your Kaizen event. Below are important things you should cover when creating your charter: 

• Identify who should attend your event. This includes the facilitator (the person who runs the event) and the owner of the event (the person with the authority to make decisions). It’s also important to control the team size and include a diverse set of participants. If too few people participate, you won’t get enough input. But if there are too many participants, it will be hard to come to a consensus. Many Kaizen event facilitators recommend between five to eight cross-functional team members.
• Articulate the problem statement. It can be a challenge to articulate the problem. Using the “five Ws and one H” approach can help get the problem out of your head and onto the page. Answer who, what, when, where, why, and how to get a comprehensive problem statement. You should also determine what resources you need. These resources might include the data, equipment, and materials your team will need to gather and analyze beforehand.
• Create your event schedule. Your charter should outline how many days the event will take and how long each session will be. Additionally, this is a good place to outline what the Kaizen team will cover each day.
• Choose an event location. If you’ve rented out a space for the event, indicate that in the charter. Also, if the location will change on implementation day (for example, moving the event to the production floor), it’s good to clarify that.
• Set the event goal and scope. This is where you indicate the goal of your event and set boundaries. Your project scope should clearly outline the specific problem that you’re solving. By making the scope clear to executives, you’ll be able to prevent scope creep.
• Decide how your team will measure success. Identify the metrics that will mean your team’s efforts have been successful. These KPIs can also help your team stay on track when other problems become apparent in the discovery phase. 

This isn’t an exhaustive list of everything you can include in your charter, but it will help you check off the main boxes. A well-constructed charter will keep your event focused on the problem every step of the way. 

Now that you know what a good charter looks like, let’s talk a bit about planning your event. 

Planning your Kaizen event: Just as important as running it

An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of doing.

Dale Carnegie

The Dale Carnegie quote highlights the importance of planning. By spending more time in the preparation phase, we can make the rest of a process smoother and give ourselves the best chance for a successful outcome. Prepping for a Kaizen event can take weeks, so give yourself plenty of lead time. Here are a few tasks you’ll want to include in your planning process:

• Starting to prep: When you first start preparing, it’s important to confirm with those attending the event and agree on the problem that you’ll address. Then, select a project owner who has the authority to make decisions during the event.  
• Organizing materials: Once you confirm the people and the problem, clearly define the scope. The scope is crucial to staying on task during the event. Also, during the organization stage, you should gather needed data and research for the event. Finally, identify what success will look like and include that in your documentation. 
• Prepping the space: Next, it’s important to guarantee your team has a dedicated space (or spaces) for the event. This is also a good time to send reminders to those you’ve invited to attend. Additionally, gather materials needed to run the event, like office supplies, whiteboards, etc. 
• Making the final preparations: Right before the event (about a week before), set up a meeting with the team to share materials and communicate the schedule. If time permits, it’s ideal to get confirmation on the problem statement once again. Finally, send out the last reminder and ask anyone who can’t attend to send a replacement.

You’ve made it to the start of your event. Let’s look at how each day breaks down. 

Running your Kaizen event like a pro

While Kaizen events can vary in length, the standard event is about five days. If you’re working with less time, facilitators will have to adjust the schedule accordingly.

Day 1

Day one starts with an introduction, which includes training on lean principles, getting agreement on the problem statement, and reviewing the data. You should limit the training on lean principles and Kaizen to a small portion of the day so the team can jump into problem analysis as quickly as possible. Dedicate the first day to educating employees and preparing them for the rest of the event. Activities might include observing the process, working on the voice of the customer documents, developing the value stream mapping (VSM), and pinpointing areas of waste. 

Pro tip: Improve your value stream mapping skills. A value stream map is a visualization of all the steps in your process that are required to deliver value to your customers. There are three things you can do to improve your VSM:

1. Carefully control the scope of the map. Ideally, you’ll create your VSM for a single product or process. This will help you ensure that your team can focus on actional improvements and not on an unattainable and vague goal like “End all waste in the company.”
2. Use a diverse team. Getting input from multiple departments is key to breakthrough insights. When different teams work together, you’ll get a VSM that covers the process holistically. 
3. Go to the production site. Don’t limit your team to discussion only. Instead, take the team to where employees are doing the work and observe the process. This action will give your team a more realistic picture of what it takes to make your product.

Day 2 

Day two is dedicated to evaluating the current state of affairs and documentation. The team will be immersed in data, working to find the root cause of the problem and the mechanics of your processes. This evaluation will include analyses of waste, bottlenecks, and time studies. 

Be sure the team updates everything in the VSM. They’ll likely use tools like Pareto diagrams, histograms, and multi-vari charts for data visualization. The team should also identify roadblocks that will impact their event and any additional resources they’ll need to find the source of the problem. 

Pro tip: Create effective Pareto diagrams. Pareto diagrams can help you identify the factors that impact your process the most. Here are three tips that can help you improve your Pareto diagrams: 

1. Ensure you have enough data. Limited data will likely make your team jump to inaccurate conclusions. 
2. Clarify your main objective. For example, if your goal is to cut costs, you’ll want to focus on problems with the highest cost. But if you’re trying to save time, you’ll want to focus on problems that happen most frequently or take the most time to resolve. 
3. Be specific about categories. A lack of time or planning may result in categories that the team can’t investigate thoroughly and are generic. As a result, your team might have a large category called “Other” instead of clearly defined smaller categories. This can throw off problem-solving because team members won’t understand the category’s true scope.  

Day 3

Once the team fully comprehends the problem they’re trying to solve, it’s time to start coming up with solutions. This includes brainstorming ways to eliminate waste and improve workflows. Additionally, the team will create implementation strategies and contingency plans. When creating the implementation strategy, your team needs to outline the steps, timing, and resources for all solutions. If time permits, they can start testing and implementing some of the solutions to get a head start on day four. 

Day 4

Day four is specifically for implementation and testing. Depending on the problem your event is designed to solve, this day may take place on the production floor. Your team will be focused on collecting as much data as possible and making refinements to their implementation strategy throughout the day. This stage is also a critical moment to train employees and set up tracking tools for continued data collection. 

Day 5

It’s time to wrap up the event and recap the progress made over the previous days. This may include a presentation that goes over the original problem, actions taken, and how your team measured up to the KPIs established beforehand. The team should finalize documentation and prepare a summary of its achievements to share with the organization. Sharing successes can motivate other teams to take similar actions in their departments. 

Day five is also a good time to review what worked and what didn’t to improve future Kaizen events. Just make sure that the team carefully documents any observations. Finally, they should ensure that processes are in place to monitor the progress of new implementations and measure the program’s success. One tool that can help with this is Jotform. Jotform’s digital forms make collecting regular feedback easy, which is crucial to continuous improvement and leveraging Kaizen events in your organization.

Embracing a culture of continuous improvement in your organization

Kaizen events are a big step toward helping your people recognize the power of change. These events can get team members excited about process improvement and can enhance team collaboration. The key is to make sure that your Kaizen events are well planned to give the best impression possible. However, keeping your event materials organized can be a challenge. This is where digital tools come into play. 

You can use online forms to collect intercompany event registrations. Jotform’s form templates allow you to gather data from participants and easily collate everything into a single database. You can also use our forms throughout the Kaizen process for data collection, tracking, and surveys. If you’d like to see how our forms can level up your next Kaizen event, try Jotform today.

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