When was the last time your company improved productivity from 20 percent to 60 percent-in only four days? Or cut inventory by 50 percent in the same amount of time? Remarkable results like these were delivered by teams of employees and those who participated in the Association for Manufacturing Excellence Kaizen BlitzSM events. Using the Kaizen Blitz, employees learned how to work as a team to tackle problems from the shop floor and, most importantly, how to solve them quickly.

That's what The Kaizen Blitz can teach you. Simply translated as "continuous improvement," kaizen is a highly focused process aimed at producing incremental performance improvements in narrowly targeted areas. The Kaizen Blitz is a powerful technique that delivers breakthrough improvements throughout an organization-fast. This book will show you how the Kaizen Blitz works and how to bring the extraordinary benefits of this approach to your company. Coauthored by executives of the AME, the book provides a frank discussion of what kaizen will and won't do, the preparation necessary, obstacles to be wary of, and the results you can expect.

The Kaizen Blitz involves everyone across an organization-managers and workers alike. 44t is a low-cost, hands-on process, where all team members are equal and everyone gets their hands dirty. This thorough guide explains how your company can put together your own Kaizen Blitz teams to rapidly develop, test, and refine solutions to problems, leaving a new process in place in just a few days. It outlines how employees can work side by side to implement the best of their ideas for reaching common business goals, such as inventory reduction, capacity expansion, cost reduction, and leveraging capital investments. You will discover how the application of a few simple tools in a straightforward, common-sense approach can bring about real and profound change, provided that management is fully committed and ready to lead the process.

In addition, the authors of this important book:
* Help you determine whether your organization is ready to attempt the Kaizen Blitz
* Outline what you need for an initial Kaizen Blitz project-and what to avoid
* Explain why software package-driven process change has limitations
* Cite results and applications in top U.S. manufacturers.

If you are committed to adopting lean manufacturing; if you want an effective tool to address specific problems in your company; if you need radical change to happen now, The Kaizen Blitz will deliver beyond your highest expectations.

The Association for Manufacturing Excellence has pioneered a powerful version of kaizen-a process for achieving continuous improvement in an organization-called the Kaizen Blitz.SM This book will show you how to use this remarkable tool to deliver breakthrough improvements in your company in areas like productivity, inventory reduction, capacity expansion, and much more. You'll learn how to assemble a kaizen team that will determine solutions to your company's specific problems by designing new systems, correcting mistakes quickly and moving on, running and refining procedures, and ultimately demonstrating a new process in place in just a few days. You'll also read about top U.S. manufacturers who have successfully used the Kaizen Blitz to bring about radical, positive change. If your company is ready to achieve dramatic results by implementing new processes-not just proposed, but in place and functioning-in a matter of days, the Kaizen Blitz is the way to make it happen.

Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
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The Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) has combined Kaizen, the Japanese word for `continuous improvement,' with 'blitz' meaning 'lightning fast' to present a term which appears to be contradictory. It works well as it conveys the sprit of 'rapid improvement' in the right context.

The 'Blitz' was developed by AME in 1994 around an accelerated 4-day format. What caught everyone's attention was the contrast between the Blitz format and the traditional formats for workshops or seminars. With the Kaizen Blitz you go with sleeves rolled up to 'make things happen' as you help implement solutions with a team in only 4 days. Typical results from actual Blitzes may yield productivity improvements in the 20-60% range, or setup time reductions in the 70-90% range with , process time reductions of 40-80%, inventory reductions of 30-70% and walking distance reductions of from 40-90%. The need for such improvements ensure long-term competiitve positions which makes this book a worthwhile addition by any operations leader.

The book provides an unvarnished understanding of what to expect when undertaking high speed improvement changes. The authors practice what they preach by keeping descriptions and discussions simple, practical, and too the point. The book contains a good blend of `how to' descriptions, backgrounds, checklists, and copies of the forms used to document and track performance throughout the Blitz.

Included in the book is a section on `Sustaining the Gain,' an important aspect that defeats many such ventures. The book is rich with practical examples for practitioners to gain from while it keeps us thinking about 'Lean Manufacturing' and the appropriatness of the Blitz as a Lean tool.

The book uses real-world examples throughout with data drawn from Blitzes in the US and Canada. Authors Tony Laraia and Dr. Robert Hall were on hand last fall at the AME Manufacturing Simplicity Conference in Toronto, which demonstrated the power of the Kaizen Blitz to over 1000 participants through the Blitz hosted by Steelcase Canada.

The Blitz is becoming increasingly popular across North America with a wide range of organizations including the Ontario-based 17-company High Performance Manufacturing Consortium, which is doing them on a monthly basis.

In summary, this book is a must read for anyone who must make rapid improvements - and make them fast. It will demystify all aspects of the Kaizen Blitz and make you want to get those blue jeans on as you roll up your sleeves to get started.

12 of 14 found the following review helpful:

I've Never Done This Before, But Let Me Tell You How.Oct 12, 2001
By Frank Papa
Three contributers, three more "experts" trying to tell us how to do something that they have never done themselves.
A lot of references and notable people and companies are mentioned, but where is the real hands-on "How to do it?"
This book is a story book and should be classified as FICTION.
This trio are writers, not "Lean Manufacturing" implementers.

14 of 17 found the following review helpful:

Disappointed!Dec 04, 2001
By raditya Agarwalla
Did NOT help us run Kaizen events. An overview and story.
Author has never implemented Kaizen, only told about others' successes.
Not a "how to do it" book.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:

"Continuous Improvement" of What?Oct 27, 2001
By Robert Morris
As you probably know already, the word "kaizen" is a Japanese term meaning "to make better" with the implication that such effort should be continuous, indeed intensive and unrelenting. Since 1994, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) has developed a series of educational initiatives known as the "Kaizen Blitz." In the Introduction to this volume, Jon Brodeur observes: "We think non-consultant-driven events -- training and on-the-floor work by the experts, the hands-on employees who have experienced the power of the Kaizen Blitz -- will continue to be a welcome addition to any organization's arsenal of improvement approaches. Small- and medium-sized companies can do it as well as larger ones and they may have an advantage if operations are small enough in scope to get their arms around." However, positive and significant results can only be achieved with an appropriate combination of leadership at its highest level, acceptance (indeed enthusiasm) throughout all other levels, and tenacious involvement about attaining 20 percent to 50 percent improvement (or greater) in performance in a short time and in narrowly targeted areas. The effective Kaizen process must be top-down, initiated and sustained by teamwork, and focused entirely on doing "whatever needs to be done" ASAP. The authors of this book explain both how and why.

The material is organized within 11 chapters whose titles correctly suggest the nature and extent of coverage: The Power of AME's Kaizen Blitz: Learning by Doing; The Roots of Kaizen; Improvement Strategy: Implementing the Big Picture; Getting Ready for Kaizen; Time Prints and Takt Times; How to Tell If There Is Improvement: Adding Value, Subtracting Waste: Uncovering the Flows: Establishing and Clarifying Process Flows; Forms, Charts, and Measurements; Sustaining the Gain: Lean Leadership; and finally, Never Look Back. Throughout the book, the authors reiterate the imperative that Kaizen Blitz initiatives must be sharply focused, task oriented, results driven, measurable and -- meanwhile -- FAST. Hence the relevance of the concept of "blitz," which gained worldwide prominence prior to and then during World War II when Fascist and then Allied forces attacked enemy positions with unprecedented velocity. As the AME Kaizen Blitz has demonstrated so convincingly, the same strategy (with obvious modifications) can effectively be implemented within any organization, regardless of size or nature.

Obviously I think highly of this book because it offers a sensitive, flexible, thoughtful and rigorous program to achieve what the subtitle correctly describes as "accelerating breakthroughs in productivity and performance." If these brief comments suggest that this is a program your organization needs, I strongly recommend that all of its decision-makers read it. Then, schedule an offsite meeting during which the book becomes the agenda for collaborative efforts to formulate and implement a Kaizen Blitz appropriate to your organization's specific needs and interests. If there is a need for additional resources, I strongly suggest Breyfogle's two books as well as one written by Pande and his co-authors.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:

ADROITLY ZEROING-IN, WITHOUT WASTED WORDS, ON KAIZEN.Apr 09, 1999

Applies the concept of Kaizen, a Japanese word for "small step" or continuous improvement, in a unique way that involves an intensive, highly focused, low-tech initiative to improve process performance of a limited scope process. The book describes, in considerable detail, how this blitz can be achieved, zeroing-in on fixing the simple and obvious things. There is a lot of information about how to improve a product process in these pages.

The key to Kaizen is to rid a process of waste; the authors present a book that has no wasted or excessive verbiage. It is a well written and valuable work. Reviewed by Yvette Borcia, Managing Partner, Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder

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