What is Kobetsu Kaizen (Focused Improvement)?

Kobetsu kaizen, focussed improvement in Turkish, comes to our language from Japanese. The approach we know as kaizen is that in a certain process, in a certain department or at a certain workstation, the team there focuses only on that area and makes periodic improvements in that area.

What is Kobetsu kaizen (Focused improvement)?

Focused improvement is the continuous improvement of a small team that is most familiar with that subject in the area, department, workstation to be improved.

What is The Purpose and Benefits of Focused Improvement?

This approach aims to maximise the impact and efficiency in the area where it is made and to maintain the arrangement for a long time and in a healthy way.

As with continuous improvement, it makes a huge positive difference not only in the areas where kobetsu kaizen is applied but also in the overall production, business, and factory layout.

As it increases the good situations, it aims to eliminate the situations that cause a decrease in the amount of profit in the operation such as waste, error, and defect.

Of course, with this, the amount of cost is reduced.

In production with fewer errors and defects, quality increases in operation and shortened delivery times come together.

After elements such as acceleration of processes, and elimination of waste in production, the speed and quantity of production will increase with the cycle.

What are the Steps to Focused Improvement?

Since focused improvement aims to reach the best version in a section, in an area, the following steps are followed in the implementation phase:

• The area to be improved is determined.
• A small team is formed from people working in the field. Care should be taken to have different employees with different perspectives in the team because this will increase the efficiency of the improvement.
• When the area and team are determined, a smart (specific-measurable-achievable-relevant-time bound) target is selected.
• The current situation is listed; here, techniques such as 5N, fishbone diagram, A3 reporting, which provide cause and effect relationships and help to analyse can be used.
• After these steps, the areas to be improved are determined, the main reasons of the issues to be improved are analysed.
• Solutions are produced according to the plans and the places to be improved, the top 3 options with the highest success expectation are prepared.
• Then a road map is created, plans are prepared.
• When it comes to the implementation phase, the solution proposals produced according to the plan are implemented
• One of the most important improvement steps is the analysis, in this part, it is checked whether what has been implemented meets expectations and whether the process is working correctly.
• In the last step, the newly developed way should be standardized and put into practice by everyone.

Teamwork, employee participation, and management support play a major role in focused improvement. In addition, employees must be trained and informed about this issue. For the continuation of such improvements, team members should be appreciated in successful improvements implemented for the continuation of such improvements, which motivates other employees. Kobetsu kaizen helps to increase efficiency, productivity, quality, and satisfaction in the production line in all types of businesses.