Quotes from Masaaki Imai

Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everybody, without spending much money.

I am beginning to see a large-scale introduction of various management tools, philosophies and practices in the service sectors and have a high hope that it will become a global trend.

The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved.

Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time

The standard is not writ on the stone. The definition of the standard is that it is the best way to do the job for now. It should be regarded as a next step to make further improvement.

The message of the Kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.

The essence of 5S is to follow what has been agreed on. It begins with discarding what we don't need in the gemba (seiri) and then arranging all the necessary items in the gemba in an orderly manner (seiton). Then a clean environment must be sustained so that we can readily identify abnormalities (seiso), and these three steps must be maintained on a continuous basis (shitsuke).

The starting point for improvement is to recognize the need.

When you solve one problem, you will see ten more.

Kaizen is everyday improvement, everybody improvement, everywhere improvement.

Hence the five golden rules of gemba management: 1. When a problem (abnormality) arises, go to the gemba first. 2. Check the gembutsu ("relevant objects"). 3. Take temporary countermeasures on the spot. 4. Find the root cause. 5. Standardize to prevent recurrence. Go

People within a company can be divided into two groups: those who earn money and those who don't. Only those frontline people who develop, produce, and sell products are earning money for the company. The ideal company would have only one person who does not earn money—the president—leaving the rest of the employees directly involved in revenue-generating activity.

Quality begins when everybody in the organization commits to never sending rejects or imperfect information to the next process.