Saturday, June 15, 2024

How To Sleep: Try Japan’s Kaizen Method To Cure Insomnia and Sleep Anxiety


Getty, Unsplash / Lead image design: Alessia Armenise

Having trouble falling asleep? The Japanese word ‘Kaizen’, which means ‘change’, could transform your bedtime routine and help tackle insomnia. Getting a good night’s sleep is absolutely essential for our mental and physical health.

Rather than being a time when the body completely shuts down, as is sometimes said, it is actually an active time when your body repairs cells, processes information and strengthens itself. Many of the exact ways in which this happens are still a mystery to scientists, but they all resolutely emphasise its importance for good health and wellbeing…..Story Continues

By: Sarah Harvey, Stylist

Source: How to get to sleep: Japanese method of Kaizen can help you sleep

.

Critics:

Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement. It is also a process that, when done correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates overly hard work (muri), and teaches people how to perform experiments on their work using the scientific method and how to learn to spot and eliminate waste in business processes.

In all, the process suggests a humanized approach to workers and to increasing productivity: “The idea is to nurture the company’s people as much as it is to praise and encourage participation in kaizen activities.” Successful implementation requires “the participation of workers in the improvement.” People at all levels of an organization participate in kaizen, from the CEO down to janitorial staff, as well as external stakeholders when applicable.

Kaizen is most commonly associated with manufacturing operations, as at Toyota, but has also been used in non-manufacturing environments. The format for kaizen can be individual, suggestion system, small group, or large group. At Toyota, it is usually a local improvement within a workstation or local area and involves a small group in improving their own work environment and productivity.

This group is often guided through the kaizen process by a line supervisor; sometimes this is the line supervisor’s key role. Kaizen on a broad, cross-departmental scale in companies generates total quality management and frees human efforts through improving productivity using machines and computing power.

While kaizen (at Toyota) usually delivers small improvements, the culture of continual aligned small improvements and standardization yields large results in terms of overall improvement in productivity. This philosophy differs from the “command and control” improvement programs (e.g., Business Process Improvement) of the mid-20th century.

Kaizen methodology includes making changes and monitoring results, then adjusting. Large-scale pre-planning and extensive project scheduling are replaced by smaller experiments, which can be rapidly adapted as new improvements are suggested.

In modern usage, it is designed to address a particular issue over the course of a week and is referred to as a “kaizen blitz” or “kaizen event”. These are limited in scope, and issues that arise from them are typically used in later blitzes. A person who makes a large contribution in the successful implementation of kaizen during kaizen events is awarded the title of “Zenkai”.

In the 21st century, business consultants in various countries have engaged in widespread adoption and sharing of the kaizen framework as a way to help their clients restructure and refocus their business processes.

The Toyota Production System is known for kaizen, where all line personnel are expected to stop their moving production line in case of any abnormality, and, along with their supervisor, suggest an improvement to resolve the abnormality which may initiate a kaizen. This feature is called Jidoka or “autonomation”. The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as: Plan → Do → Check → Act. This is also known as the Shewhart cycle, Deming cycle, or PDCA.

Another technique used in conjunction with PDCA is the five whys, which is a form of root cause analysis in which the user asks a series of five “why” questions about a failure that has occurred, basing each subsequent question on the answer to the previous.[20][21] There are normally a series of causes stemming from one root cause, and they can be visualized using fishbone diagrams or tables.

The five whys can be used as a foundational tool in personal improvement. Masaaki Imai made the term famous in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. In the Toyota Way Fieldbook, Liker and Meier discuss the kaizen blitz and kaizen burst (or kaizen event) approaches to continuous improvement.

A kaizen blitz, or rapid improvement, is a focused activity on a particular process or activity. The basic concept is to identify and quickly remove waste. Another approach is that of the kaizen burst, a specific kaizen activity on a particular process in the value stream.

In the 1990s, Professor Iwao Kobayashi published his book 20 Keys to Workplace Improvement and created a practical, step-by-step improvement framework called “the 20 Keys”. He identified 20 operations focus areas which should be improved to attain holistic and sustainable change.

He went further and identified the five levels of implementation for each of these 20 focus areas. Four of the focus areas are called Foundation Keys. According to the 20 Keys, these foundation keys should be launched ahead of the others in order to form a strong constitution in the company. The four foundation keys are:

  • Key 1 – Cleaning and Organizing to Make Work Easy, which is based on the 5S methodology.
  • Key 2 – Goal Alignment/Rationalizing the System
  • Key 3 – Small Group Activities
  • Key 4 – Leading and Site Technology
  1.  Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success. New York: Random House.
  2.  Factory Efficiency Comes to the Hospital”The New York Times.
  3. Audit in psychotherapy: the concept of Kaizen” (PDF)Psychiatric Bulletin16 (6). Royal College of Psychiatrists: 334–
  4. Europe Japan Centre, Kaizen Strategies for Improving Team Performance, Ed. Michael Colenso, London: Pearson Education Limited, 2000
  5. Debunked: “kaizen = Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement””. Archived from the original on 2019-01-07. Retrieved 2009-08-15
  6.  Kaizen, Mastering Eastern Business Philosophy”ROI Overload. Retrieved 2019-07-27.
  7.  Project management blog 28. Dezember 2006, On Pm-Blog.com, last visited 4th November 2022.
  8. Work analysis, evaluation and design Lecture, On Uni-Oldenburg.de (PDF; 1,2 MB), last visited 4th November 2022.
  9.  The improvement engine: creativity & innovation through employee involvement: the Kaizen teian system. Productivity Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-56327-010-9. Retrieved 6 February 2010.
  10. The Kaizen Blitz: accelerating breakthroughs in productivity and performance. John Wiley and Sons. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-471-24648-0. Retrieved 6 February 2010.
  11. Five Reasons to Implement Kaizen in Non-Manufacturing”6sigma.us. Retrieved March 31, 2015.
  12. Kaizen Event Fieldbook: Foundation, Framework, and Standard Work for Effective Events. Society Of Manufacturing Engineers. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-87263-863-1. Retrieved 20 April 2013.

 

  1.  The Kaizen Event Planner. Productivity Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-1563273513.
  2. Essential Skills for Supervisors. New York: Productivity Press. ISBN 9781498703963.
  3.  Balay, Reza Sadigh (2013). Hacia la excelencia: sector del mueble y afines. Editorial Club Universitario. p. 33. ISBN 978-8484549598.
  4. Taking the First Step with PDCA”. 2 February 2009. Retrieved 17 March 2011.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What Is a Put Option Exploring The Fundamentals and Uses

Witthaya Prasongsin/Getty The stock market is unpredictable, and even the most dedicated Wall Street enthusiasts aren’t fortune tellers. But...