Kaizen

Kaizen is an industrial engineering and management method built around continuous, incremental improvement, in which small, frequent changes to a process, often suggested and implemented by the workers who perform it, are used to steadily reduce waste and improve quality, safety and efficiency, rather than relying on occasional large-scale overhauls. The Japanese term, meaning change for the better, became closely associated with the Toyota Production System, where structured kaizen events bring cross-functional teams together to analyze and improve a specific process over a short, intensive period. The approach spread from Japanese manufacturing to industrial engineering and management practice worldwide from the 1980s onward, particularly through Masaaki Imai's writing on the subject.