“"There is always a better way of doing things!"”

Successful manufacturing companies are always driven by the quest to continuously improve on what they are doing. They are guided by questions like "How can we improve this?" or "Is there a better way of doing this?". And more often than not, these improvements are initiated by the operators on the shopfloors.

These proactive operators not only enhance their own efficiency but also contribute to the Company's profitability with simple yet effective solutions. Many of these useful ideas result from trouble-shooting or problem solving addressed at day-to-day operational issues.

In the manufacturing parlance, this activity is often described as kaizen. Kaizen is actually a Japanese term where ‘kai' means change and ‘zen' means good, so together it means a good change or improvement. However, today the term - as a business process - means ‘continuous improvement'. And it is practiced not just by manufacturing professionals but also general business professionals.

A quick example Godrej Security Solutions faced an operational issue at its plant when the operators needed to improve the quality of internal threading in Mounting Hub of Marine doors because the constant usage affected both the thread quality as well as the finish leading to rework. The kaizen developed by the team not only resolved the problem but significantly improved the efficiency by reducing the rework time from 20 percent to five percent! The Kaizen also reduced the cycle time by seven percent and the indigenous design fatigue decreased as inspection reduced from 100 percent to sampling.

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