Kaizen

Kaizen - methodology is Japanese origin and means continuous improvement everywhere in company for to obtain better effects, even by very small steps, resulting with positive achievements and progress. For some Japanese companies it is a "method of life" in consideration of constantly growing international competitiveness. It forms the base for such systems like: JIT-just in Time (Toyota Production System), Lean Production, TPM-Total Productive Maintenance and TQM-Total Quality Management. Many of improvements are based on common sense used and applied by creative thinking of employees. In Western countries there are 2 performances utilized in management: to maintain the status quo and to develop innovations. The first one is linked to management standards, to operational procedures, to policy principles, and so on. Innovations mean the progress in free form, by small steps or by big jumps, sometimes doing a significant breakthrough in company life. In such case it needs actually very often the advanced technology, bigger investment costs, progressive know-how, etc. Normally they are included to the factor ROI (return on investment) having in mind the return of money spend formerly. The observations and comparative presentation of both ways are in the article demonstated and discussed.