Some readers of this section may have already heard of this word and know it is a Japanese business term about improving things.

In the 1980's and early 1990's, many large Japanese companies set up manufacturing operations in North America. As they acquired North American companies (like Bridgestone's takeover of Firestone, and SONY's takeover of Columbia Pictures) the Japanese corporate leadership spread their management style to their subsidiary companies and many non-Japanese learned basic Japanese terms for business practices.

Kaizen, Sogo shosha and Keiretsu became some of the common terms used by North American managers.

The reason why we discuss this in 2005 and beyond is because the philosophy of continuous improvement is no longer just a Japanese managerial objective, but something many companies strive for due to the influences and challenges forced by the

• intense competitive environment
• continued advances in the technological environment
• increasingly difficult economic environment
• and fluctuating changes in the social / cultural environment

WTGR

KAIZEN is a culture of sustained continuous improvement focusing on eliminating
waste in all systems and processes of an organisation, starting with the GEMBA (or the work place). 

Principles: 
 http://www2.umassd.edu/SWPI/processframework/kaizen/kaizen.html
   1.human resources are the most important company asset, 
   2.processes must evolve by gradual improvement rather than radical changes, 
   3.improvement must be based on statistical/quantitative evaluation of process perform

"As an industrial norm, Japanese practices seemed to embrace belief in multi-skilled, committed  employees who respond flexibly and with know-how to resolve local, operational problems and fluctuations. If sales are low instead of continuing to produce blindly, reviews of practices and  efficiencies, maintenance operations and training would be normal activities for employees in a team.  Rank-and-file employees might participate in other creative endeavours."
 http://sol.brunel.ac.uk/~jarvis/bola/jit/kaizen.html

Kaizen's importance to the Japanese
Masaaki Imai, author of 'KAIZEN, The Key to Japan's Competitive Success', says "KAIZEN is the single most important concept in  Japanese management - the key to Japanese competitive success."