News - KAIZEN Institute New Zealand

In December 2009 Kaizen Institute New Zealand passed another milestone, welcoming its 100th visitor to our “Office Live” tour.
“Office Live” is a practical way to demonstrate how Kaizen and Lean Office principles and techniques can be applied in an office environment. We try to put into practice what we preach, and relish the opportunity to take you on a short tour of our offices in Mt Wellington.

Masaaki Imai’s KAIZEN Lean journey started in 1950 at age 26, taking Japanese managers on tours of American plants looking for the secrets of high productivity and efficiency. In 1961, he returned to Japan and became the first corporate headhunter and consultant to major corporations striving for a competitive advantage. Twenty years later, the situation was reversed, with Mr. Imai receiving visitors from all over the world intent on seeking out the secrets of their Japanese trading partners- via KAIZEN Lean Study Tours.

Our Kaizen Institute team hosted David Meier in our Auckland office in November. It was a great opportunity to show David how we apply Kaizen Lean principles in our own “Office Live” and to have a general discussion and share ideas with him over lunch.

KAIZEN Institute New Zealand is the leading provider of KAIZEN and LEAN consultancy and training in New Zealand.

KAIZEN College is the training and development arm of the Kaizen Institute. The College’s primary function is to provide continuing professional development to continuous improvement professionals at every level of an organisation. The seminars are part of a three level global certification program allowing the participant to become a certified KAIZEN Practitioner, Coach and ultimately a Manager.

Kimball Fink-Jensen from the New Zealand office joined KAIZEN Institute in 2008 and established the first agency specialising in “lean measurement”, which is about finding and reporting the right numbers to accompany the KAIZEN/lean journey. He visited the USA in late September and attended the 5^th Lean Accounting Summit in Orlando, Florida.

By Danie Vermeulen, @DanieVermeulen

I took one look at my bloated Twitter page and decided that is a perfect candidate for applying “5S”. Loosely interpreted, this proven Japanese approach means to sort out your mess; arrange it to become functional; clean it; standardize the way you’ll use it in the future and then to make your new organised and clean way a habit.

The new Kiwi Toyota “Believe” ad campaign does not only succeed to capture that special KAIZEN attitude of Continuous Improvement. It’s also adding a good dose of that “never give up – make it work” Kiwi culture. A clever and perfect mix!

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.