Kaizen Event / Kaizen Blitz
A kaizen event brings a cross-functional team together for 3-5 consecutive days on one bounded problem — from analysis to an implemented and tested solution before the week is out. The intensity is the method: no waiting between decision and action.
A sharp charter: problem, scope, target, mandate — agreed with the area’s management in advance
The team is fully released on all days — half participants give half results
Data is gathered BEFORE the week (measurements, videos, layout drawings), so day 1 isn’t spent searching
Maintenance/engineering is on standby for physical changes mid-week
Review the charter and target, briefly train the necessary methods, and spend most of the day at the gemba: observe, measure, film, interview. End the day with a shared, data-driven description of the current state.
Root causes (fishbone + 5 Whys) in the morning; solution design in the afternoon. Prioritise solutions the team can implement within the week — a solution requiring an investment application is a different project.
Build, move, mark up, write standards — and TEST with real production the same day. Adjust on the spot. This is where the event differs from workshops: the changes are physically made when the week ends, not described in slides.
New standards are finalised and trained with the whole area (including those not on the team). Results are measured against the target and presented to management by the team itself — not by the facilitator. Remaining items get an owner and date on a visible 30-day list.
The facilitator and area leader audit: do the new standards hold? Are the measurements sustained? Are the remaining items closed? Without this step, a typical event loses a large part of the gain over the first months.
How it goes wrong in practice — and this is where most implementations part ways.
Five intense days cannot compensate for a wrongly chosen problem. The charter and the pre-data decide the quality — the week only executes.
If the team is external experts and the area’s people are extras, no one owns the result on Monday morning. The area’s own employees must be the core of the team.
The remaining items were “the hard 20%” — typically the ones that anchor. Without disciplined follow-up they are quietly forgotten, and with them the rest slips.
The method only works when it becomes daily routines and leadership behaviour. The operations check shows in 4 minutes where your operations stand — and what should come first.