Let’s wash our hands much more frequently to prevent atypical pneumonia!
 
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Lead time reduction cannot be achieved by the president alone. Experts alone cannot do it either. This is a theme that really requires the participation of all the employers and all the employees. In a normal company organization, each person can only do his or her job. It is not easy to discuss improvement between different departments, even if they are related to each other. However, on the other hand, people from various departments gather on Genba and discuss their relations and problems about the products, synergistic and surprisingly large effect will be delivered, and in the process you can get high motivation.
 
The president gather the Kaizen that have been implemented separately by each department and determine themes of overall optimization. Then the small Kaizen by each people gets together and they become big and start supporting the company’s strategy.
 
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Question : Have you had an experience of this type Kaizen?
 

The year 2019 has begun. The speed of change might increase further in various ways this year .
 
The Olympic Games Tokyo will be held a year and a half later and the preparations will take place much more. Incredible many people that none of us Japanese has experienced yet may come to Japan and stay from all the world only for one month.
 
So many people at one time from various countries, then, what is the accommodation? The transportation? the payment? There are a lot of problems under the present systems.
 
Therefore, accommodation and driving services using smartphones and AI, and digital cashless payment will spread all at once.
 
This year there is no doubt that the declining birthrate and aging population will continue and new technological advances like AI will accelerate. What will be required for manufacturing will also change drastically.
 
We can’t stop the change. But we can prepare. All we need to do is Kaizen without fear of failures, with all of us together. Means to cope with change is Kaizen. This is the keyword of this year.
 
 
It seems difficult….
 

It is almost year-end. At this time of the year, I have kept saying “Time flies!”. It is really very fast!!
 
The end of the year is the time to look back the year to finish and to think of the coming year. It is time to execute Check and Plan of P – D – C – A cycle. So, I’d like to try out the C – A – P – D cycle based on what have happened recently around me.
 
I was chatting with some managers in a meeting a few weeks ago. One person (A department manager Mr. A) said, “Our company has insufficient power to challenge new things.” Then I asked him, “What can’t you do in your company?”. He answered, “I do not have any concrete idea, though …”. “Our company” was also about “I”. I thought that all the managers which Mr. A belongs are saying the same. Such a company has a very small amount of Kaizen ideas and little improvement.
 
On the other hand, at the company D, we ran the KZ method by 10 people including the president a few days ago. Each person stack cards to things that are not used immediately, moved them outside, and everyone discussed and made a good conclusion on overall optimum Kaizen. The site became very refreshing! After the activity, all the 10 people spoke about the activities of next year clearly. The implementation plan for Kaizen in the early years was also concrete. I thought the company D was reliable.
 
The difference between Company A and Company D is whether they do Kaizen immediately or not. Nothing will happen no matter how much you analyze how difficult it is or how to take responsibility in case of failure. On the other hand, if improvement is carried out just by doing the KZ method by everyone in front of the actual thing and further ideas come out lot more immediately.
 
2019 is the year of action! Let ‘s do Kaizen enjoying with Waiwai Gayagaya.
 
Thank you very much for your great support this year and have a happy new year!!
 

I cannot proceed my job with my own pace. Once the consulting schedule is fixed with the client, I must visit the factory on the day because many people are waiting for me. Therefore, it is necessary for me to keep the condition always good.

In this way, I have written about masks and breathing method. And I received a mail from a reader, “Consulting is a hard job …”, but it is not true. It is because I am a health geek.

Then let me keep writing in this line.

I believe that continuous exercise is good for health. So, I walk much every day. I want to walk at least 10,000 steps a day. The number of walk steps is large because my workplace is factory shop-floors. But just walking on shop-floors is not enough to walk 10000 steps. So, I do light jogging about 3,000 steps in the morning. I do not jog on a rainy day, so I do not necessarily make 10,000 steps every day but achieve 70,000 steps in a week.