Kaizens

Story Kaizen describes the success story of the specific continuous improvement and gives credit to the multifunctional team members.

The main objective is to achieve more efficient process and ease in operator’s job. It also involves the detailed analysis of problems. It accelerates breakthroughs in productivity and performance, which are carried out by cross-functional teams. In fact, more than 90% of the failures can be systematically analyzed to find out the root cause of the failure with the help of the ‘Phenomenon Observation’ method using 5W 1H (When, Where, Who, What, Why and How).

Dos

Mention whether the problem is sporadic or repetitive.
Capture data, based on observation in a chronological order immediately after the failure has occurred (5W1H).
Capture past historical data about the equipment. Mention how many years the equipment is running. If similar equipments are running at more than one place, get data related on all such equipment with a holistic approach.
Take relevant photographs of the failed parts / equipment / and the locations as many as possible immediately after the failure took place and after the counter measures have been implemented.
While presenting, give brief description of the process and about the equipment (Proper hand made sketch can also be made).
Try to preserve the failed / broken part. This helps in identifying the pattern of failure.
Make use of mapping to show the conditions of the parts, in case of similar application of same parts in different sections.
If counter measures implemented is successful, should be horizontally deployed in similar places. Mention such areas.
Show the failure trend after the counter measures have been implemented
If the counter-measures progressively refined in more than one-steps, show the PDCA cycles till the final counter-measure has been implemented.

Don’ts

Do not come to the solution hurriedly.
Do not use abbreviations for any process / equipment etc.
Do not show data based on assumptions.
Do not use graphs without proper parameters / legend
Do not show photographs without title and labeling.
Avoid too much text in slides.
Don’t give irrelevant information.

The given attachment includes many described case studies of story kaizen. It explains in details about how to analyze problems, prepare for action plan, make and measure process improvements.

Click here to view the Story Kaizens