Masaaki Imai

This book’s interesting title spawns from the Japanese language, which serves as the nomenclature for the essential concepts conveyed in this text. This book communicates the concept of management which grew out of Japan, was popularized in the 1980s, and served as the philosophy for companies like Toyota. Management texts like this and Deming’s famous fourteen points taught and continue to teach the international business community about running better businesses.

The philosophy of this work is simple. Instead of focusing on goal-achievement (as many in the West have), workers should focus on continual improvement (the kaizen) of their work practices (the gemba). Each day, they should try to eliminate some wasted energy or product from their work (the muda). I find this philosophy more congruent with my understanding of my work in the sciences and in research. It facilitates open-ended work instead of predefined (and often constricting) goals.

Although the concepts are commonplace in leading American businesses today, the nomenclature was introduced to me from a group at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who use it to manage their medical center. After 200 pages of theory, this book also contains about 200 additional pages of use cases where these concepts are applied to many businesses in many different situations across many continents. It is relevant to areas as disperse as manufacturing, medical practice, and software development.… (mehr)

Si hay una obra que ponga al alcance del lector y del administrador occidental el conjunto de prácticas y herramientas administrativas que constituyen el secreto del llamado "milagro japonés", es ésta. Los conceptos que hoy han pasado a ser parte de la cultura administrativa internacional — "círculos de calidad", "cultura empresarial", "mejoramiento continuo", "enfoque hacia el cliente", justo-a-tiempo"—, aparecen explicados como instancias de un único concepto básico: el Kaizen. El autor resume al principio la diferencia fundamental entre el concepto Kaizen, es decir la administración "a la japonesa", y la filosofía administrativa occidental: mientras que el primero se orienta a los procesos, la segunda pone el énfasis en los resultados. En los capítulos y apéndices de Kaizen, Imai expone con detalle en qué consisten las prácticas adoptadas por algunas de las compañías japonesas más importantes (Ricoh, Nissan, Toyota, Canon, Matsushita, Kayaba, Komatsu, Kobayashi Kose) para asegurar su permanencia en el mercado a través de la satisfacción más completa posible de las expectativas de los consumidores.… (mehr)