持续改善是指改善或好转。它指出的理念或做法，重点在不断改进的过程，在制造，工程和业务管理。在业务改善包括许多日本企业，都被认为是他们成功的一部分的因素。改善包括质量，自动化，建议系统，及时交货，在企业经营和5S看板。它提高了生产力，并使汽车行业增长，这项统计结果是根据许多公司得出的结论，如丰田。
The term, Kaizen refers to improvement or change for the better. It states the philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, and business management generally. In business Kaizen encompasses many of the components of Japanese businesses that have been seen as a part of their success. Kaizen includes Quality circles, automation, suggestion systems, just-in-time delivery, Kanban and 5S in running a business. It has improved productivity and made the automotive industry grow according to many companies such as Toyota.
Purpose 目的
This paper tends to obtain results and analyse the effects of Kaizen on improving productivity in the automotive industry.
Design/Methodology/Approach 设计/方法
This is a conceptual paper, and secondary data based. The paper examines a vast body of research, which looked at the model from different perspectives, and critically explores its potential benefits and drawbacks in the automotive industry.
This paper shows that success of Kaizen model is not always guaranteed, certain variables in the industry still applies, leaving the effect to differ according to firms and systems used by each company.
Keywords
Effects, Kaizen, Improve, Productivity, Automotive industry.
I. Introduction 简介
Japan's management philosophy has introduced a new creative strategy for competitive success in business, or the so-called "Kaizen" model. The term Kaizen began to receive attention from management experts and scholars around the world when Masaaki Imai published his first book in 1986, "The Key to Japan's Competitive Success". Kaizen is a Japanese word, which means "continuous improvement" (Manos, 2007). In the broader sense, Imai (1986) described Kaizen as "the process of continuous improvement in any arena of life, personal, social, home, or work." In business, he defined it as "the process of gradual and incremental improvement in a pursuit of perfection of business activities." Under this strategy, continuous improvement is considered to be everybody's job in an organization, in that any employee must do his/her job and improve it (Channon, 2005).
A decade after publishing his first book, Imai revisited Kaizen in another book in 1997 - a contribution which further enhanced Kaizen strategy "the Japanese way" by stressing the importance of the workplace (where real action occurs) in continuous improvement. According to Kaizen, there should be improvement every day in an organization. Even "total quality management," which has received focused attention in the literature in recent years, was found deeply rooted in the Japanese management, and thus viewed as an integral element in Kaizen strategy. Figure 1 as follows is the kaizen umbrella in which every alphabet in KAIZEN contains their different meaning or components.
Figure 1. The umbrella of Kaizen. Adapted from "Kaizen Philosophy: A Review of Literature," by Jagdeep Singh and Harwinder Singh, 2009, The Icfai University Journal of Operations Management, Vol. VIII, No. 2, Copyright 2009 by The Icfai University Press. Adapted with permission.
II. Literature Review 文献综述
Kaizen strategy and the drive for competitiveness: challenges and opportunities (Sami Al Smadi, 2009). Kaizen is a strategy to reduce energy consumption and waste, and yet improve productivity in targeted activities and processes (Wilson and Morton, 2006). Kaizen has qualitative and quantitative benefits, including more time and money saving with reduced inventory cost (Manos, 2007). One study found that Kaizen was the reason for substantial improvement in process performance (Bradley and Willett, 2004). Many organizations have prove a drastically improvements - often 50% and above - in key operating measures such as lead-time, floor space, work in process(WIP), cycle time, productivity, on-time delivery rate, and def
