Is Managing Kaizen an Oxymoron?

I’ve said time and time again that True Kaizen must come from within. But managers still have to manage. It’s their job. Understanding how to manage an autonomous and creative workforce can be confusing. “Managing Kaizen” can even seem like an oxymoron. The key is to understand what you are managing. Management doesn't mean making all the decisions, or telling people exactly how to do their job. As a true manager, your job is to provide people with everything they need to manage themselves. This mainly consists of information that connects their daily and even hourly work to the needs of customers and the organization as well as feedback on how well their performance is meeting these goals. For this reason, visualization is a vital skill for both management and frontline employees to collaborate on. 

Visualization to Respond Immediately

The purpose of visualizing production is to show everyone whether work is running ahead of, on time, or behind the schedule. If we find out that we are behind schedule at 5 p.m., it would be impossible to recover because everyone is eager to leave work and go home. The sooner you find out if work is falling behind schedule, the easier it is to catch up. The quickest way to eliminate delays in work is to respond immediately to remedy any delays, instead of putting it off to the end of the workday.

Management is to help us determine what is normal and abnormal, quickly and accurately, at any given time. Hitoshi Yamada defines true management as the following:

“True management” is to…

reveal what is normal and abnormal.

reveal what is early and late.

reveal what is good and bad.

You must visualize a situation to everyone so that they understand the state of the situation in the most concise manner.

Front line team from BFG Philippines with their production management board

Production Management Boards

Production management boards are among the most common lean management tools, but they are often not as effective as they should be. This is usually because people did not focus on revealing the elements of true management listed above. A production management board must indicate critical information such as what items need to be produced and how many items must be completed by a certain time throughout the day. At every interval, the actual production achieved needs to be written next to the goal for that particular time period. If there was a delay, causes and explanations should be documented on the board. When production is running as scheduled, this means that it is being managed without any issues. However, if there is the slightest delay in production, this written documentation shows how it was immediately solved and addressed.

Simple example of a production management board

So, What are Managers Really Good For?

It is the role of managers to frequently visit each shop floor and understand what types of existing issues have been encountered or solved. It is also important to work with the people in each work area to ensure the same issues do not occur again and do not occur in other areas as well, especially in certain production lines that are vulnerable to particular types of issues based on their history. In cases where there are many issues with machinery or equipment, a maintenance department should be alerted so that they can perform more extensive care on particular machines. If defective raw materials are the cause of a problem, the purchasing department needs to be provided with the necessary information to educate their suppliers and install changes.

Last but not least, managers must fully engage with all other supporting departments in order to solve issues that are beyond the control and authority of the a specific department.

Much of this article touches on deeper lessons from my new book, with co-author Toshihiko Miura, True Kaizen. Give it a read if you would like more in-depth guidance on how fostering and supporting an effective culture of improvement is wonderful for any organization and community.