Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, strongly believed in philosophy that “the ideal conditions for making things are created when machines, facilities, and people work together to add value without generating any waste.”
Continuous Improvement, also known as Kaizen that translates from Japanese as “improvement” (kai – “change” – zen “good”), is ongoing effort to improve existing products, services, or processes by implementing rather smaller than major changes.
Here are some of the best quotes for your inspiration:
All we are doing is looking at the timeline from the moment a customer gives us an order to the point we collect the cash. And we are reducing that timeline in the value stream by removing non value-added wastes.
If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
Don’t say it can not be done, rather say, you don’t know how to do it yet.
Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
If you don’t ask the right questions, you don’t get the right answers. A question asked the right way often point to its own answer. Asking questions is the ABC of diagnosis.
Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.
If you define the problem correctly, you almost have the solution.
Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
Before you say you can’t do something… TRY IT.
Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.
The thing is, continuity of strategic direction and continuous improvement in how you do things are absolutely consistent with each other. In fact, they're mutually reinforcing.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
A relentless barrage of “why’s” is the best way to prepare your mind to pierce the clouded veil of thinking caused by the status quo. Use it often.
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
Everything can be improved.
What get measured, gets managed.
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures.
If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.
The message of the Kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.
Manage the cause, not the result.
Additional Quotes
Since one of the most important factors of continuous improvement starts with people, here are few additional quotes:
I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I can’t prove that. And there are no models.
Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.
Management is about telling people what to do, and leadership is about allowing people to do what they’re capable of doing.
Everyone wants to contribute. Trust them. Leaders are everywhere. Find them. Some people are on a mission. Celebrate them. Others wish things were different. Listen to them. Everybody matters. Show them.
I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Focus on being productive, instead of busy.
Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.
Worry is the most wasteful thing in the world.
The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.
The nightmare is big data when you need to react fast. You need small data.
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.
Watch the little things; a small leak will sink a great ship.
If you don’t have time to do it right you must have time to do it over.
Invest a few moments in thinking. It will pay good interest.
Growth and improvement is about acknowledging weakness.
Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection.
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