6 Japanese Concepts for Business Process Improvement

1. 6 Japanese Concepts for Business Process Improvement

2. Japan has provided the world with a treasure trove of management concepts. These concepts have travelled all over the world and reserved solid places in some of the most successful organisations in history. This blog highlights six such enormously popular Japanese concepts that have helped and continue to help organisations improve their business processes and operations. Kaizen Do you remember how you learnt to walk? Or do you remember how you learnt to speak your first language? The answer is probably no and you never mastered these skills on a given date. But you can tell for sure that it was not an overnight phenomenon but rather a journey of incremental learning and efforts covered over years. It applies to most of the skills and competencies you might have acquired over the years. It is true for learning to eat, learning to cook, learning to drive, completing an educational course, saving money, practising yoga and meditation, learning to swim, and more. The process of making incremental learning or efforts over a longer period towards achieving a goal is the essence of Kaizen. That is why Kaizen is sometimes also referred to as ‘continuous improvement’. It focuses on making small changes on a routine basis for bigger results in the long run. This makes Kaizen a continuous process until the desired goals are achieved. However, efforts for improvement need not necessarily stop.

3. For example, practice and improvisations help swimmers inch closer and closer towards perfection. While there may be no defined state of perfection, continuous improvisations help strive towards it. The accuracy in observation and analysis is critical in Kaizen. Kaizen has many useful applications for improving business processes. For starters, Kaizen helps reduce waste or redundancies from business processes. This makes business operations more resource-efficient. Wastes or redundancies in business processes can manifest in the form of overproduction, overstocking, long checkout time in stores, high rate of defects, high rate of product returns and product exchanges, delay in making/receiving payments, slow order fulfilment timelines, etc. Applying Kaizen helps ensure that the relevant KPIs and other mechanisms are put into place to identify wastes and redundancies and help take the right measures. Other applications of Kaizen for BPI are change management, introduction of process automation, use of data analytics, skill enhancement, etc. Kaizen also comes with certain pitfalls. Kaizen need not always be the solution. Sometimes the right answer may be turning a switch on or off. Kaizen is for long-term goals. If an outcome or result is mistakenly considered a long-term goal, it may still be achieved by Kaizen but business prerogatives may not allow such timelines when the solution is short-term. For example, there may be many reasons for delays in eCommerce home delivery. The problem may lie in route mapping or misfit technology. By making corrections in the problem area, the solution can be achieved instead of applying Kaizen.

4. 5S (Five S) You might have used several eCommerce apps and websites for shopping. Think of the ones that are your favourites. The chances are very high that all of them have one common denominator and it is that they all are meticulously organised paving the way for superior UX. When information or content is presented in a well-organised state, it becomes easier for the users to operate an app or website. The same applies to our homes, offices, stores, roads, cars, workstations, file cabinets, wardrobes, and almost everything. A valuable outcome of being in an organised state is that we can not only use our assets or manage our actions better but also bring changes or improvements in them. That makes being in a well-organised state one of the essential requirements to identify and implement improvements. If Kaizen is about change, 5S is about organising. 5S is most commonly applied for keeping workplaces organised and productive. The concept focuses on 5 action elements namely Sort (Seiri), Straighten (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardise (Seiketsu), and Sustain (Shitsuke). Let us examine each of the principles one by one. Sort (Seiri): Have less to manage. Having more requires more managing efforts. Unnecessary or redundant assets or activities should be eliminated from workplaces. Only the essential ones or the ones which are currently in use should be retained. For example, you can remove one or two slabs from your fridge to make room for larger containers. You can keep it aside as you do not need it as per your current usage requirements.

5. Straighten (Seiton): After you are left with the essential items, it is time to arrange them in such a way that best serves your objectives or usage requirements. Easy access or view could be one of the ways to place things. For example, you may want your CCTV monitor to be placed in front of your security guard’s desk from where it can be easily viewed. Shine (Seiso): Cleanliness and hygiene also play an important role in keeping workplaces productive. Let us use a virtual example here of antivirus software. If your office computers are not equipped with good-quality AV applications, it is only a matter of time before they will get infected with viruses and malware. Keeping it like that could pose far more dangerous problems like getting attacked by ransomware. Standardise (Seiketsu): Develop and implement policies and procedures for maintaining an organised and productive workspace. To keep things organised, you will need to put in routine efforts for the same. We can use the example of coin-based trolleys in big retail stores. In such trolleys, in-store customers need to punch in a coin that unlocks the trolley from a chain of locked trolleys. After shopping, customers will have to place the trolley back to that original chain of trolleys and the coin will get punched out. The strategy helps keep trolleys in their designated places solving a big problem for retailers.

6. Sustain (Shitsuke): The last element is sustaining the efforts of 5S to secure effectiveness in the long run and prevent falling back to a disorganised state. It can include measures like feedback and reporting, periodical audits and review meetings. Each of the elements of 5S can be applied to achieve business process improvement. Sort (Seiri) can help in eliminating unyielding activities or elements making processes more efficient. Straighten (Seiton) can help streamline processes and bring more certainty to operations. Cleanliness and hygiene i.e. Shine (Seiso) can contribute to maintaining quality standards. Seiketsu aligns with the idea of process standardisation. Finally, Sustain (Shitsuke) can help in maintaining consistency in operations and results. The application of 5S can give the appearance of a strict and centralisedorganisation. The efforts to stay organised via 5S can sometimes be crippling for innovation. It can also slow down the speed of work and operations because of additional focus on standards to keep things organised. Measuring the results of 5S is also a challenging task. Gemba When banks give construction loans, it becomes imperative for banks to assess from time to time whether the instalment sums of loans provided by them are being used for the intended purpose. This is something bank officials cannot always determine virtually or sitting in their offices. 

7. They have to physically visit the sites for checking. In doing so, many banks send new employees with seniors for such visits. Their role is not to make judgements but to observe and learn how the seniors are doing their job, what they are checking, whom they are talking to, and so on. This is a type of training as well but covers the essence of Gemba. Gemba can be translated as ‘the place of action’. The essence of Gemba is going out and checking things out in the place of action. The idea behind Gemba is that problems and solutions become more easily visible and comprehensible by going to the Gemba i.e. the place of action. This makes Gemba – management by walking around, reading things, and taking stock of the situation. There may be multiple objectives of doing the ‘Gemba Walk’. It can include understanding work, reading situations, comprehending problems, identifying solutions to problems, and bringing improvements. Given its fundamental features, Gemba can have extensive applications. In the context of business processes, Gemba are the places where operations take place or where value is created. Gemba can be used to improve business processes in numerous ways. At the onset, Gemba walk can help identify problems or potential challenges that might not have been possible to be detected on reports and papers or in the routine flow-of-the-work observations. Secondly, Gemba walks can help improve senior-subordinate relationships at workplaces as it allows them to communicate more often. It also helps improve employee engagement levels by reflecting that the top management cares about how things are getting done at the level of execution.

8. Employees are encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. Gemma can help reveal whether SOPs are religiously followed or not – something we always emphasise in our SOP consulting services. The extent of process standardisation at the grass-root levels could also be determined. It can also shed light on important insights and inputs for process automation. Gemba is a slow process. Gemba timelines can extend up to weeks or even months. Even after spending that kind of time, it does not automatically guarantee success. The success of Gemba requires expert vision and planning. It takes experienced leadership to conduct and see through that Gemba applications meet the expected results. In large organisations, without adequate control, Gemba can lead to a slowdown of operations or postponement of work. Gemba could prove to be meaningless without result-orientation. Poka-Yoke Imagine that while cooking a food item you could not recall whether you have added salt or not. If you have already added salt but add it again assuming you had not earlier, you could ruin the taste. The same is true the other way around (albeit in less damaging ways). The simple practice that we all commonly follow is taking a sample of the food while preparing and tasting it. What we are doing here is making sure that we do not make any mistakes or commit any blunder in our activities that could ruin the entire show. Knowingly or unknowingly, what we are following here is the essence of ‘Poka-Yoke’.

9. The essence of Poka Yoke is mistake-proofing or avoiding mistakes or blunders. In Japanese, Poka and Yoke roughly translate into ‘mistakes’ and ‘avoid’ respectively. Anything that we do to prevent or avoid mistakes is essentially Poka-Yoke. To apply Poka Yoke means the deployment of necessary measures to prevent mistakes or errors. These measures could range from simple steps (sample testing as in the above example) or complex activities like company audits or trial runs (like NASA’s Artemis program). At the macro level, these measures help organisations correct themselves, prevent them from repeating the same mistakes, or prepare for bigger projects. Poka-Yoke is directly related to business process improvement. The concept means to improve by not allowing mistakes or errors to happen. If you are not making mistakes, you are improving the quality of your execution. Using checklists is an applied form of Poka-Yoke for achieving BPI. By using checklists, it is ensured that no required activity or element is missed. This improves the quality of business processes. Another example is the use of SOP templates (customised). SOP development and implementation ensures that everything takes place with due adherence to the established standards at every step till the final intended results are obtained. Poka-Yoke focuses on mistakes. If there are mistakes in identifying the mistakes, the concept may not hold much relevance. Suppose that in the cooking example used above, you forgot to consider the aspect of water.

10. Even if you might have sample-checked the amount of salt, adding too much water later on would dilute the effect of the amount of salt added earlier. This makes Poka-Yoke a subject of wisdom combined with expertise and experience. You could think of any other example, say planning for a journey and identifying the mistakes or challenges that you may encounter in it. If you fail to correctly read the journey or spot the challenges, you might not as well prepare for them. Kanban Do you use sticky notes at the office? Do you take printouts of your work schedules for the week and paste them in front of your desk? At least, you must be using GPS. All these randomly chosen examples have one thing in common – it is the element of graphical or visual representation. This helps us better understand the flow of what we are doing, what we will be doing, and where we are at present towards achieving certain premeditated objectives. If you are using any of these, you are already applying the concept of Kanban in your daily lives and/or deriving benefits from it. Kanban is nothing but any visual or graphical representation (including both physical and digital) of work or flow of work for better comprehension and work management. It is a visual or graphical work management system for easy representation and comprehension of the flow of work.

11. The objective of Kanban is to help process stakeholders (those involved in a work) quickly and easily have an overview of the entire workflow and the present statuses of different tasks and activities in it. For example, when you use the GPS or share your location, it helps you and your team quickly have an idea of where you are, what progress you have made in a journey, whether you are on the right course, etc. Kanban helps bring improved visibility and transparency to business processes. It provides a clear picture of the entire workflow to teams. It helps quickly identify pending tasks or potential slowdown of work from such accumulation of pending tasks. Kanban focuses on completing tasks in the planned order and prevents deviating from the intended course, increasing the intensity of focus and efficiency of business processes. If work is slowing down anywhere, concerned process stakeholders would quickly reckon to bring amendments and speed up their work. Today, with BPM software, it is even easier for teams to make adjustments to their work management. For example, the doer of a task can be easily changed and this change will show up on the task screen of all the team members helping them carry on with their work. As experienced SOP consultants, we always maintain that Kanban cannot take off without expert-level SOP design and implementation. When we are talking about contemporary business processes in an average organisation, we are referring to a complex series of workflows involving a large number of stakeholders with multiple points of coordination with other processes and departments. Such process streamlining and coordination is hard to achieve without the right SOP solutions in place and Kanban cannot succeed without streamlined processes.

12. Kanban also calls for process stability. This stability comes from the maturity that comes from a process standing the test of time with a trail of process audits, process gap analysis, as-is process analysis, to-be process mapping, and many small and big process adjustments over time. Shikata Ga Nai Did you ever have a flat tyre situation on a road trip? How many times has a portion of an ice cream (with a stick) chipped off while still in your hands? Did you ever click on restart instead of shutdown? These experiences are quite common. Our reaction or response to those situations is also quite predictable. There is very little we can do to prevent these events or outcomes. We end up letting it go which is the essence of Shikata Ga Nai meaning ‘it cannot be helped’. In other words, it means to accept things which are not in our control or cannot be helped and therefore, it is better to accept them or let them go. Instead, we can prepare our response to such situations or change how we deal with such elements. Experience also teaches us to take the right path and measures to altogether avoid choosing the wrong option. For example, it is not a good idea to have a stick ice cream in the open under sunlight as the chance of melting and breaking of the ice in it is quite high. In the context of business process improvement, Shikata Ga Nai helps focus on what is controllable and make adjustments or room for what is not controllable. For example, just because an employee is present in the office for 7-8 hours does not mean all those hours are productive. The actual effective hours of working are always less than that because employees are humans, not machines.

13. Recap If Kaizen teaches us the importance of small, incremental steps for improvement, Five-S shows us how to stay organised. Gemba highlights the importance of one’s association with ‘the place of action’. Poka-Yoke guides on avoiding mistakes. Kanban reiterates the significance of visuals for managing work. Shikata Ga Nai indirectly tells us to focus on what is controllable and letting go of what is not. Look at each of the highlighted parts – improvement, organised, place of action, avoiding mistakes, letting go, and the use of visuals. Each of these elements is highly valuable for stability and success. Improvements help achieve better results in better ways. Lack of organisation makes it difficult to focus and channel efforts. The use of visual signs is a powerful tool for organising and operating. Without awareness of the ground-level realities i.e. the place of action, decisions are not going to be sound and effective. If the scope of making mistakes is minimised, the count of mistakes is most likely to go down. What cannot be controlled should be let go and managed to the extent possible. These six Japanese concepts can help bring business process improvement in numerous ways. One example for each concept is reiterated here. Kaizen can help decrease waste or remove redundancies from business processes. Cleanliness and hygiene i.e. Shine (Seiso) from Five-S can help maintain quality standards. Gemba can help detect problems that can be easily overlooked on reports and papers or in the routine flow-of-the-work observations.

14. By using checklists (an applied form of Poka-Yoke), it can be ensured that all required activities or elements are duly covered. By providing a clear picture of the entire workflow, Kanban helps bring improved visibility and transparency to business processes. Shikata Ga Nai helps improve focus and identify and manage uncertainties to the extent possible. To know about our business process consulting services or to speak to one of our business process consultants, please drop us a message and we will reach out to you.