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Essay on Adaptations of Gemba-Kaizen in American Business Management
“Kaizen” means continuous improvement. The word implies improvement that involves everyone—both managers and workers—and entails relatively little expense. From the 1970s onwards, managers in the west have felt themselves to be on a roller-coaster of change, expected to deliver improved business performance by whatever means they could muster. Caught between the need to manage decisively and fear of failure, managers have sought credible new ideas as a potential route for survival.
Adaptation of Kaizen in American business management has not shown any dramatic results as the whole thing is a slow process. Although many American companies have shown inclination towards the whole process but the quantification of the success is not possible. Countries like India, China, Singapore and others are also adapting the Kaizen process for achieving long term goals.
The shift of economic power to the Asia-Pacific region emphasized the weakness in traditional western - specifically, American - management methods. To meet competition from East Asia, industries and organizations in older developed countries have been forced to restructure. The Japanese provided both a threat and a role model which eastern and western companies tried to copy. The term 'Japanization' came into vogue in the mid-1980s to describe attempts in other countries to make practical use of 'Japanese' ideas and practices, reinforced by the impact of Japanese subsidiaries overseas. Initially, the main interest lay in forms of technical innovation and manufacturing methods such as 'continuous improvement' and 'just-in-time'.
In early 90’s their ways of managing people have attracted attention. A key feature of Japanese organizations is the emphasis on worker commitment, flexibility and development.
The Art of Japanese Management highlighted the competitive advantage which the Japanese gained through effective people management (Pascale, 1999). The message came through that at bottom; it is the human resource among all the factors of production which really makes the difference (Dalton, 2000).......
