Japankaizen

Well, Japanese people have a good tool in order to “get rid of” this problem. They call it “red tag” movement. Below are steps to guide us to implement red tag movement.

Provide come pieces of tags, (of course, they must not in red, we can use any color, as long the same color for all tags). <!–adsensestart–>

At the beginning of a period of implementation, put tag on things that we think at the gray area. For example, at the beginning of the month, week, or any period that we decided.

Each time we use them, remove the tag

At the end of the period, we will easily know which stuffs are still needed and which ones are not.

Scrutinize stuffs that still there is tag on it. Decide whether those are still needed or not. If not, get rid of it, if yes, let them there (still with tag on it)

Start the process from the first step. We may need to prolong the process in order to ensure us before throwing unneeded stuffs after the first round of process.

October 13th, 2007
Categories: Kaizen's Steps . Author: japankaizen . Comments: 1 Comment

After being stuck for about two months, I’ll start my “kaizen” blogging. Now, I am going to talk about 5S, another simple yet powerful concept that becomes “a package” together with kaizen. 5S stands for 5 initials of following Japanese words:

1. Seiri

2. Seiton

3. Seiso

4. Seiketsu

5. Shitsuke

According to siliconfareast, is a structured program to systematically achieve total organization, cleanliness, and standardization in the workplace. A well-organized workplace results in a safer, more efficient, and more productive operation. It boosts the morale of the workers, promoting a sense of pride in their work and ownership of their responsibilities.

According to Japanese, 5S is a set of steps for improvement. As we might know that improvement itself is kaizen. So, is short, 5S is one of ways to implement kaizen. In detail, 5 S can be explained as follow:

Literally, seiri means put things in order (organize them) according to specific rules or principles. In practice, this refers to actions to distinguish between necessary things, and getting rid of what we do not need. This means the act of throwing away all unwanted, unnecessary, and unrelated materials in the workplace. People involved in Seiri must not feel sorry about having to throw away things. The idea is to ensure that everything left in the workplace is related to work. Even the number of necessary items in the workplace must be kept to its absolute minimum. Because of seiri, simplification of tasks, effective use of space, and careful purchase of items follow.

This fist simple concept of 5S will be very useful if it can be implemented in daily life of any organization. We may see (I saw it at my own room too L), that there so many unnecessary things around us. If we try to count it precisely, we may get 40:60% useful and unuseful things. Suppose we have only useful things, that are related to our work, then how much space we can save, how many seconds saved for searching only to get particular things that we want.

The essence of this step is to reduce space and time for searching. Moreover, fewer things scattered around us make our room cleaner.

Read more…

October 13th, 2007
Categories: Kaizen's Steps . Author: japankaizen . Comments: 2 Comments

After being idle for several weeks, I decided to

back to focus on kaizen.

August 4th, 2007
Categories: General . Author: japankaizen . Comments: No Comments

This video is about Lean Sigma for process industry workshop. The file can be downloaded from download page or played directly by clicking link below.

July 21st, 2007
Categories: Kaizen's Video Presentation . Author: japankaizen . Comments: No Comments