There are multiple programmes to improve the quality and efficiency of your processes, one of these is known as Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese principle that generally means “continous improvement” where you make incremental improvements to your processes that can lead to increased efficiency, motivated team members and reduced defects (1).

It’s impossible to get everything correct first time or reach that ideal goal quickly that is manageable. Making incremental steps will make improvements a habit which will lead to better results in the long term. Think of it like fitness, you aren’t going to get jacked or be able to run a marathon immediately as it requires gradual improvements to reach those fitness goals.

If you look online there are various explanations of Kaizen and their principles here are a selection:

“4 Ps of Kaizen” (2) The 4 Ps are purpose, process, people and performance.

• Purpose: Setting goals and objectives
• Process: The systematic approach used within the methodology to map out your processes, identify areas of improvement and resolve issues.
• People: Involving everyone in the organisation and empower them to make changes.
• Performance: Measure, analyse the outcome of your improvements and ensure they meet your goals:

The Kaizen institute (3) indicates there are 5 Principles to Kaizen which are: Know your customer, Let it Flow, Go to Gemba, Empower People and Be Transparent.

• Know your customer: Identify your customer interests and creating value for them
• Let it Flow: Remove waste and create value
• Go to Gemba: Gemba is a principle where management need to visit and inspect where the work is being carried out. This can be a shop floor in a factory, construction sites or operating theatre in a hospital (4). Gemba is important as it foolish to try and make changes to procedures if you never went to where the work is being carried out. Upper management need to understand this as if they want buy in from staff they need to know who is carrying out the work, understand their challenges, what the work entails before improvements can even be considered. Forcing changes will lead to backlash but also poor results as the new procedures may not be suitable for the company, operations or industry.
• Empower People: People need to be given power to make improvements to their work.
• Be Transparent: Performance improvements need to be measurable with hard facts backed by data.

The 5S of Kaizen (5) are Seiri (Sort), Seiton (Straighten), Seiso (Shine), Seiketsu (Standardize), Shitsuke (Sustain)

• Seiri: Eliminate unnecessary items from the workplace, repurpose them to serve a new task that is required. This is to declutter the work area, free up storage space and save money on storage.
• Seiton: This principle focusses on ensuring each work area setup is suitable for the task at hand. This can be a workshop where it has the required tooling which are easily located and has a place to be stored. The main objective is to increase efficiency by minimizing the time for looking for items or tooling. This can also be used in data management where each document and file can be easily found and quickly.
• Seiso: Identify issues within each operational processes and tag them for the teams to resolve.
• Seiketsu: Standardize the workplace and processes with clear instructions. This can be through colour codes, rules, equipment, layouts, materials used methods in identifying issues and areas for improvement. Having standardized equipment will aid teams to independently carry out their work without waiting for specialized equipment to become available. Using standardized codes, terminology and procedures avoids confusion which can lead to mistakes being made.
• Shitsuke: Sustaining an ethos in continuous improvement is key for Kaizen and any other quality improvement strategies. Management needs to genuinely care about quality and lead by example. Audits, and using various quality control and insurance tools, SPC or any other analysis tools can help keep track if improvements are making a positive impact.

While there seems to be different “flavours” of Kaizen the main principles are the same. The main focus areas are make a clear definition of your goals, eliminate waste, creating value for your customer, identify the root cause and resolve problems and standardize your ways of working.  

Kaizen is important. You want to empower people in your team within your company or project as they can aid you in identifying ways to do things better both in terms of efficiency but also in quality. To improve motivation within a team is to empower each member and encourage them to think of better ways to carry out tasks. If they are motivated, they will want the product to succeed and make themselves better and willing to accept changes. In addition, those who are doing the tasks know more about the processes and products than the higher ups, so they know exactly where things need to change and they themselves are more likely be able to successfully adopt changes that will maximise the improvements. That’s not to say you never include others but management need to listen to their subordinates when it comes what can be improved.

An example of Kaizen being used for developing cubesat is as follows:

The mechanical engineering team are assembling a 3U cubesat together, one team is assembling the subassemblies while another engineer is integrating the systems into the satellite. The company is a startup running for 3 years and it is noted that different members are working in different areas of the workshop which has different equipment types at each section. It is also noted the electrical team store equipment in the mechanical area and each mechanical engineer have their own methods in assembling the satellite with differing results in proficiency. Also, the workshop area is constantly a mess. The satellites design requires different types of screws for each components (countersunk, M2s,M3s,M4s DIN912 bolts of varying length).

The goal is to reduce the time to assemble the cubesat subsystems and the satellite. A brief example of using Kaizen to improve the efficiency of assembling the satellite is as follows:

• Seiri: Remove the electrical equipment from the assembly section and place it to a designated area for the electrical team.
• Seiton:
  • Have the mechanical team work within the same area of the office with all the tooling required (Allen keys, torque wrenches etc) are placed in a tooling cabinet.  There are enough tools for each team member to be able to work concurrently so that they don’t have to wait for it to become available.
  • The drawers in the tooling cabinet have cutouts so that each tool and attachments have their own place and are returned after the team member no longer needs them. This is to eliminate time to look for tooling and more time put to assembling the satellite (adding value).
  • The assembly instructions can be easily found in the shared drive and a whiteboard is installed in the assembly area so that the mechanical team can print out and pin the instructions. This allows each team to see what items they need and order each step should be.
  • Consumables such as Loctite, screws, nuts and washers are in a separate cabinet which are close to the assembly area. Each consumable is clearly marked and have their own place. Each drawer is labelled to avoid the engineer to open multiple drawers.
  • Inventory is recorded so that when consumables are running low replacements are ordered to ensure they are available when needed.
• Seiso:
  • A major issue is the satellites require a wide range of bolts which makes assembly time consuming.
  • The team identify this issue and brainstorm methods into improving the design to reduce the number of unique bolts required.
  • It is also noted that each team member has a unique way of assembling the satellite. This has led to inconsistencies in assembly time and in some cases parts assembled incorrectly in the wrong order and failures in subsystems.
• Seiketsu:
  • The order of each subsystem to be assembled is standardised.
  • A training course of best practice for using the equipment and assembling each component and satellites is implemented.
  • Jigs are designed and manufactured to make it easier to assemble the satellite so that specialised skills are not required when handling the satellite.
  • Only one type of screws is used (DIN912) instead of a range of screws so that only 1 type of tooling is required to assemble the parts.  
• Shitsuke:
  • The team hold meetings on areas of improvement within the work area and the processes in building the satellite.
  • The team are exploring the possibility of implementing Kanban to schedule the assembly of each subsystem.
  • In addition, the team are considering in using takt time to identify how long the assembly time should be.

This is a brief example of Kaizen being used to improve the process of assembling a cubesat. A more in-depth study would provide a more solid plan of action and areas of improvement. During the Seiketsu process we could see that adopting a standardised training course would give the team new skills and would be useful for inexperienced engineers to be able to provide good quality work comparable to their experienced colleagues. Not only will Kaizen help improve your processes and productivity it can help the team find ways to bring each member up to a required standard. Empowering employees is critical to a successful business. Kaizen is not a magic bullet, but it will significantly help when combined with a robust quality assurance programme and open-minded management. No matter the industry everyone should strive to be better.

Bibliography

1. Kanbanchi. What is Kaizen process? [Online] [Cited: 15 August 2024.] https://www.kanbanchi.com/what-is-kaizen.

2. Lean Enterprise Institute . 4Ps Prove Lean Applies Everywhere. [Online] 15 March 2012. [Cited: 15 August 2024.] https://www.lean.org/the-lean-post/articles/4ps-prove-lean-applies-everywhere/.

3. Kaizen Institute. [Online] [Cited: 15 August 2024.] https://kaizen.com/what-is-kaizen/.

4. Lean Enterprise Institute . [Online] [Cited: 15 August 2024.] https://www.lean.org/lexicon-terms/gemba/.

5. Procurement Tactics. The 5S of Kaizen — The Ultimate Guide. [Online] [Cited: 15