March 28, 2024

Before we understand what exactly are the alternatives of kaizen let’s get a briefing on what kaizen is and how it works.

Kaizen is a process through which companies and businesses bring improvement in their businesses. There are several departments in which kaizen applications can be successfully implemented. Some of the departments which usually face instant success with kaizen applications are accounts, marketing, human resources, strategy department, manufacturing, management and services. If the principles of kaizen are applied with care they can help in elimination of waste, removal of additional unnecessary work and introduction of activities that will lead to more profit generation. However, kaizen cannot be successfully implemented if the employees are not trained about it properly. It is very important for the employees to know how kaizen works it will make them analyze as to which activity of theirs is a wastage of time and which one is giving them profit. As results are generated the employees become more and more motivated and as a result they keep on working for the betterment.

However, it is not only kaizen which helps in bringing the efficiency of the company upward rather today there are several alternatives to kaizen available in the market, which are highly effective and give the user profound results. The very first alternative to kaizen is the kanban system. The kanban system is a highly effective tool to reduce the operation costs by eliminating all the wastes and the scraps.

Through this system, several worksites are created which can give birth to instant responses and also push the methods which assure quality control and proper achievement of designs of projects. It also helps in attaining the trust of the employee in order to help achieve maximum output which using their resources to the maximum. Kanban is a very powerful tool and makes use of both pull and push policies to gain a better control over the workflow. The results that companies usually face after implementing kaizen are that they are able to cut down their costs tremendously while also achieve higher benefits.

The second alternative of kaizen available is called Business Process Reengineering also known as BPR. BPR aims upon bringing relevant changes in the environment of the organizational structure. It usually focuses upon technology and office automation. BPR keeps on implementing strategies till it does not get the working environment which is effective, ethical and also grabs a lot of profit for the company. The three major elements of BPR are processing of materials, data and financial outcome. The main target of BPR is those departments of the organizations where core businesses processes take place. It then after visualizing their operations creates strategies which will cut down the costs, increase the use of limited resources and maximize the profits to the maximum. They achieve all this by redesigning the basic operations, retooling them and then finally re-orchestrating.

The third alternative to kaizen is Modular function deployment (MFD). It is a structured process which identifies the best product design which covers the development of the product from every possible angle. The aim of MFD is to successfully deliver the product to the right audience and attain their satisfaction in return. Along with design factors it also takes several critical factors into consideration such as customer requirement, brand image and product strategy.

Each of these alternatives to kaizen target only on making a lot of profit by utilizing the least possible resources.