News - KAIZEN Institute New Zealand

To follow in the leading footsteps of our global colleagues, KAIZEN® Institute New Zealand brought the first “Office Live tour” group through the Office on the 11^th of March 2009. “Office Live” is a practical way to demonstrate to clients how KAIZEN® principles and techniques can be applied in an office environment. It is a way for KAIZEN® Institute offices to practice what they preach to their clients. A group of 12 people from diverse industries like Manufacturing, Recruitment, Education, Health Care and Information Technology, visited the KINZ office in the afternoon as part of the recent three day Total Service Management training course.

Over the Christmas period KAIZEN® Institute NZ received and email enquiry from Proton Malaysia regarding their KAIZEN® College seminars.Proton Malaysia, the national automobile manufacturer, have been on their Lean journey for many years and are a long standing client of our colleagues at KAIZEN® Institute Malaysia.

Proton have now embarked upon a supplier (vendor) improvement programme, and their enquiry was for KAIZEN® Institute NZ to deliver two seminars hosted by Proton in Malaysia.

Lean thinking is an improvement methodology that has become a global phenomenon. Although traditionally applied to manufacturing processes it is now commonplace across other business functions delivering both organisational efficiencies and tangible customer benefits.

KAIZEN® helps to reduce costs and satisfy patients

KAIZEN® Institute Portugal has been working with hospitals since 2004. Antonio Costa, Consultant based in Porto, reports on initiatives and achievements at Hospital Geral Santo António (HGSA):

KAIZEN®Tours are an integral part of the services offered by the KAIZEN® Institute worldwide. These tours are one of the premier Lean study tours available in the world today. KAIZEN® Institute run these tours throughout the year and the 2009 programme will be available shortly.

Some companies can benefit during the global economic crisis

KAIZEN® consultants from more than 20 different countries have been meeting this week in Switzerland at the KAIZEN® Institute’s annual country leaders meeting. KAIZEN® Institute businesses from all the corners of the world were represented – offering a unique opportunity to get a finger on the collective pulse of this global audience with first hand experience and contact within many different industries. An interesting common theme during the week was the country leaders’ optimistic outlook for their clients following the global economic crisis.

Danie Vermeulen from KAIZEN® Institute New Zealand joined fifteen other KAIZEN® Institute colleagues from Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, USA, Mexico, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, India and Brazil to participate in an advanced TFM training course. The hands-on training was hosted by one of the laminated floor board plants of a well known forestry products company.

1^st Asia-Pacific Regional Conference Story – 29~31 July

The 1st Asia-Pacific Regional Support Team Meeting was held in Auckland in July this year. This time, we had Ashok (from India), Alex (from Australia), Wen and Suresh (from Malaysia), and Eric (Global) visiting our beautiful & peaceful country. Our main objectives for the meeting were to build and get to know our team, to learn from each other and to agree a strategy and plan to expand and strengthen our region!

Advanced TPM Training – Rieter Automotive Tilsonberg ON Canada

August 24-28^th saw the inaugural Advanced TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) college seminar hosted at Rieter Automotive-Tilsonberg.

This 4 day seminar was a combination of classroom theory combined with real-live Gemba experience as the participants applied their knowledge to one of the Rieter production lines.