In a world with strained supply chains, increased competition, intensifying skilled worker shortages all threatening manufacturers' ability to meet customer demand, operational efficiency is more essential than ever.  Kaizen or Continuous improvement has helped manufacturers improve processes for decades but the philosophy has recently come under fire for encouraging improvement myopically on a process level disconnected from a holistic picture of efficiently bringing the product to market. Digitizing Kaizen has become a necessity for modern companies wanting to drive product improvement. Companies that fail to digitally optimize processes for improved efficiency risk falling behind competitors, overprocessing their products and wasting time improving processes that should have been discarded in the first place.

Kaizen or continuous improvement can help businesses to stay profitable by discovering methods for improving the speed, safety and quality of their processes. However, many businesses are still applying the traditional paper based Kaizen practices to their production process. Paper-based Kaizen processes are slow, time-consuming and inefficient. And, instead of helping businesses grow, they are sabotaging their digital transformation by encouraging improvement siloed from business objectives.

In this article, we’ll talk about what Kaizen is, how it can be improved through modern digital tools and how the Connected Worker platforms can help.

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is one of the core principles of The Toyota Production System, a quest for continuous improvement and a single word that sums up Toyota's "Always a Better Way" slogan. It has been a go to method for many Japanese companies and industry leaders across the globe.

Kaizen is the concept of “continuous improvement” where employees  and management work together to bring gradual improvements to the manufacturing process to increase efficiency and productivity. Kaizen is a combination of philosophy and an action plan where employees discuss the current processes and perform experiments to improve those processes and eliminate waste.

While Kaizen is quite popular among global organizations, there is a need to adopt emerging technologies such as Connected Worker platforms and Front line Worker platforms to inform these processes with real time data to optimize production and create less waste.In this article we are going to look at how these cost effective digital tools can help in optimizing production, eliminating waste, and enhancing the Kaizen process for the entire organization during these turbulent times.

Why Should You Be Digitizing Kaizen?

Traditional paper-based Kaizen practices focus on improving individual processes instead of working towards the overarching business goals.

The problem is that there isn’t the ability to view data holistically when it’s collected through paper based processes. Data is either unavailable or inaccessible in siloed systems. This means you are unable to ask the most important question about a process, which isn’t whether it can be improved, but whether the process is necessary at all.

‍Through a Connected Worker platform, all job execution data is immediately captured and management is updated in real time.  By capturing this wealth of process data, manufacturers can determine whether each individual process is adding value to the overall product or whether steps can be eliminated.

Let’s look at the five phases of the Kaizen event and how they can be improved with a Connected Worker Platform.

Step 1: Define current and desired state

A Connected Worker platform helps you easily define the current state of your process through data analytic driven insights. You can look at days, weeks, months of performance of this process to determined your baseline. This baseline can be used to help you decide a realistic desired state for these processes once they’ve been improved through the Kaizen process.

Step 2: Discuss and agree on possible changes

Granular data from a cloud Connected Worker platform enables you to test different experiments to find a working solution to improve the process. This can inform your discussion between front line workers and management. The ideas for process experiments can be based on information gleaned by interviewing top performers to learn their best practices.

You discover these performers by simply looking at the data and finding the high performing outliers. You can interview them and learn how they are doing the process in a better way. In this way individual excellence can become elevated team performance.

Step 3: Implementing Improvements

Once the improvements for a process are finalized, they can be implemented in the digital workflows of the front line workers. They’ll receive updated digital instructions which will include visual instructions(videos, pictures, diagrams, written instructions). This process is as simple as changing the workflow and pushing a button to deploy them to your front line teams. You can try out the improvements on small teams before rolling them out organization wide.

Step 4: Refine Improvements

Not every improvement translates to a significant enhancement of the overall process. Through a Connected Worker platform, you’ll get real time performance data about how the new improvements performed and whether the new iterations were valuable or not. You can track on a granular level whether the innovation has improved the speed and quality of processes. This is a prime benefit of digitizing kaizen.

Step 5: Standardize Implementation

Now that you’ve determined which improvements are valuable , it’s time to implement those changes organization wide.

Just replace the old processes with the new materials and assign them to the correct teams automatically using the Connected Worker platform. Every front line worker will receive the updated workflows and kaizen gains can be made permanent through automation.

It’s important to note that implementation improvements are much easier with digital tools because they are by their nature agile. With the push of a button you can deploy new workflows and video training instead of waiting for weeks and months to generate paper based training across an organization.

Solving the Problem of Kaizen

In recent times, companies have started debating the ‘real’ value of Kaizen and whether it truly improves organization efficiency. The controversy stems from the question of how to decide whether a process or a step should be improved continuously or discarded entirely. Blindly improving processes without consideration to business objectives can be a considerable waste of an organization’s time.

This is where Front Line Worker platform's software come into play. A Front Line Worker platform enhances visibility into every process related to the creation of a product. You can create predictability around those processes to enable Just In Time production and connect each process to the creation of the product and business objective.

This operational transparency not only enables managers to keep an eye on inefficient processes but also look at how processes intersect to check if they add value. If the process doesn’t add any value to the final product, it can be eliminated rather than improved.

‍Conclusion: Atheer’s Connected Worker platform can help take continuous improvement to the next level by providing real time data and knowledge support to measure, capture and raise your company's standard.  Atheer’s AR-powered Front-Line Worker platform will digitize your Kaizen process and enable your front line teams to work faster, better, and safer.

The data driven agility of Atheer’s system elevates Kaizen and provides manufacturers with the holistic visibility they need to know which improvements you’re making truly affect your bottom line and improve productivity.

Atheer’s low code/no code Front Line Worker platform is easy to integrate with your legacy ERP, MES and Bi systems and its suite of modern digital tools will help you in digitizing work instructions, creating step-by-step guides, training videos, inspections and more using the devices your employees naturally use in the flow of work(laptops, phones, tablets and Smart Glasses).