Kaizen within Kaizen Teams: Continuous and Process Improvements in a Spanish municipality

Abstract

PurposeAs organizations become more team oriented, research on teams continues to increase especially involving how teams contribute to organizational performance and effectiveness. Although there has been existing research on Kaizen teams in the private sector, very little research has included Kaizen teams in the public sector. In this paper, we present a method to study Kaizen teams in a local Spanish government that have been using Kaizen teams for more than ten years.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative research was adopted for this study. Twenty teams participated in the study by filling out the Team Learning and Development Inventory (TLI) proposed by Lingham (2004). In addition, we interviewed members of the teams in order to clarify and assure our quantitative results.FindingsBased on the findings, we propose that Kaizen teams should practice both Continuous (CI) and Process Improvements (PI) in their projects. We also propose that Kaizen teams should not be teams skilled only at developing better improvement processes (both CI and PI) for the organization but that such teams should also be skilled at engaging in team development using both CI and PI processes internally – a Kaizen within Kaizen teams approach.Research limitationsIts based in one case study. However, it is working paper and the research project still is developing.Practical ImplicationsServe as a guide to practitioners (Public managers) who desire to understand how their Kaizen teams involves both internal (conversational spaces) and external (methodology) perspectives that would contribute to both team and organizational effectiveness. In this paper, we focus on the Internal Processes (both CI and PI) using the TLI as an effective method for Kaizen teams to engage in the Kaizen process.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at team’s performance using Team Learning and Development Inventory in Spain’s public sector. It is also the first to mention about the relationship of the team’s performance and the implementation of process improvement methodologies in Spain local government environment.

Eventos Kaizen: una valoración de su impacto en el Sistema sociotécnico de una empresa mexicana

“…These results are promising because literature [15,21] affirms that these relationships are critical due to their contribution in aspects such as continuous improvement, efficiency and effectiveness of internal processes. They also increase organizational knowledge.…”

“…Thus, the success of continuous improvement processes depends on the potential of the members in the organization [20]. Consequently, it is expected that Kaizen teams will develop both continuous improvement as well as internal process abilities [21], benefiting from the interaction and the integration of accumulated abilities from the organizational knowledge [22].…”

Environmental comfort based (ECB) methodology as a tool for preparing Kaizen application in a catering service company

“…One of the best ways to facilitate this participation is through the establishment of Kaizen teams in improvement projects, composed of employees from the same area with the objective of solving simple problems (Sandoval-Arzaga and Suárez-Barraza, 2010). Kaizen teams are work teams organized for achieving the goals and objectives established in response to improvement strategies, that are focused primarily on improving work methods, routines and procedures (Stone, 2010; Suárez-Barraza and Lingham, 2008).…”

The relationships between shop floor management and QCCs to support Kaizen

“…QCCs (or just QCs) are group-based improvement activities (Suárez-Barraza & Lingham, 2008) that include a small number (e.g., between 5 to 15) of volunteer employees (Lillrank & Kano, 1989) to meet regularly (e.g., once per week) (Sillince et al, 1996) to identify, investigate, analyse and resolve problems (by using quality control tools) in workplace (Ishikawa, 1986). Applying QCCs does not always require large capital investments (Imai, 1986), but requires a high human component (Bessant & Caffyn, 1997).…”

“…Kaizen is continuous and process-driven. It focuses on the course of the implementation (Suárez-Barraza & Lingham, 2008) and aims to produce cumulative results from an on-going and incremental change process (Ma et al, 2017). The emphasis is on the involvement of everyone (Bhuiyan & Baghel, 2005) to stimulate improvement ideas (Distelhorst et al, 2016) and sustain improvement outcomes (Rapp & Eklund, 2007) using common sense (Nihon HR Kyōkai, 1995) and low-cost methods (Bond, 1999) over a prolonged period (Laraia et al, 1999).…”