Kaizen Planning, Implementing and Controlling
Foreword
Since the 1960s, Mexico has experienced increased industrialization. Such growth has been supported by the Maquiladora Program and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), through which foreign-owned companies, mainly from the United States and Canada, settle in the Mexican territory.
The northern Mexican border became one of the most favored regions. More specifically, in cities such as Tijuana, Mexicali (Baja California), and Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) the growth of manufacturing companies—or maquiladoras—sky-rocketed. Maquiladoras, also known as maquiladoras, are factories importing a great amount of raw material and equipment and exporting final products around the world.
Maquiladoras arrive in Mexico with high technological and methodological manufacturing tools. One of the most important of these production methods is lean manufacturing (LM). LM is a set of tools for the elimination of waste along the production process, focusing on error detection, cost reduction, and increased efficiency.
However, the main issue with LM techniques and methods is their cultural implications.
LM philosophies emerged in Eastern companies; consequently, their application in the Western industry often poses some problems, and sometimes the expected benefits are not obtained. In that sense, Kaizen is an LM tool that has gained more territory during the last years, yet its implementation is still challenging to the Western world.
To address this gap for the Mexican industry, this work identifies the critical success factors (CSFs) for Kaizen implementation and associates them with the benefits obtained by Mexican manufacturing companies..
The book contains 13 chapters grouped into five sections. In Chap. 1 we define lean manufacturing, discuss the tools that form the lean production system, and address Kaizen as a LM tool. This chapter is generic, as it briefly describes each LM tool but also aims at relating them. Then, the chapter analyzes past and current works on Kaizen, provides an overview of its main benefits, and discusses the objectives and limitations of this research.
Chapter 2 provides an extensive literature review of Kaizen, where 235 articles are statistically analyzed.
The review is addressed from different perspectives. First, we examine Kaizen research per years of publication, highlighting the increasing trend in Kaizen research during the last years. Second, we report the leading journals and magazines in Kaizen publication, and classify research papers based on the country of origin. Similarly, graphs depict the distribution of Kaizen research by
considering leading universities, departments, and the most prominent industrial subsectors.
Chapter 3 is one of the most important. It divides Kaizen implementation into three phases: planning, execution, and control. Then, it discusses critical success factors (CSFs) at each phase and examines the type of Kaizen benefits—economic,
competitive, and for human resources—that can be obtained from Kaizen imple- mentation. Readers are strongly encouraged to carefully review this chapter since understanding each one of the elements addressed is central for interpreting the models proposed in the last three chapters.
Chapter 4 discusses the research methodology followed in order to develop and test the structural equation models that relate Kaizen critical success factors with
Kaizen benefits. The chapter also explains the survey construction and adminis- tration processes, as well as the data capture and analysis procedures, including data
screening and validation. Then, the chapter briefly explains the information validation process, as well as the descriptive analysis of items. Finally, the last part of this chapter summarizes how structural equation models are evaluated to determine their efficiency Chapter 5 is the first chapter reporting findings from data gathered in the manufacturing industry of Ciudad Juárez. The descriptive analysis of the sample is summarized by highlighting the surveyed industrial subsectors, as well as the size of companies, the gender of participants, their work experience, and their job
positions.
Chapters 6–8 discuss the descriptive analysis of the items at the three Kaizen implementation phases (planning, execution, and control). Each analyzed item shows a median value as the measure of central tendency and an interquartile range (IQR) value, considered as the measure of data dispersion. A similar analysis is carried out to Kaizen benefits in Chap. 9, where benefits are sorted based on their median value. Benefits with the highest median value indicate that they are always obtained in the manufacturing industry of Ciudad Juárez.
Chapter 10 details the validation process of the observed variables. Since these variables are integrated into latent variables, we make use of the Cronbach’s alpha index to determine whether they should remain in the latent variables or ought to be removed in order to increase internal consistency of the dimensions. Internal consistency validation is important since models proposed in the following three chapters are based on the analyzed latent variables.
Chapters 11–13 propose a series of models to interpret and assess the relationship between every Kaizen implementation phase and the benefits obtained in the manufacturing sector of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Every chapter includes three models. The first two analyze four latent variables each, two of them concerning Kaizen activities at the different implementation phases.
However, the third model of each chapter integrates, through a second-order factor analysis, Kaizen
implementation latent variables into a single latent variable, depending on the implementation phase studied. The purpose of this integrative model is to provide a general overview of the relationship between every Kaizen implementation phase and the economic benefits.