Kaizen in Schools

Kaizen has obvious applications in business, but what about schools?

Business applies Kaizen because it is a proven, powerful method of increasing profits, productivity, safety and quality, while decreasing waste and employee turnover. While the term "profit" generally does not apply to schools, they still have budgets to meet and they should be concerned about all of the other points from improving quality to decreasing waste.

Kaizen, at its most fundamental level, is a method of improving communications, and recognizing the value and contribution each employee makes. It approaches this by encouraging all employees to make continual suggestions, and the organization then acts quickly on those suggestions. This results in a continual stream of small improvements.

Any organization that is interested in improving how they operate -- whether a school, business, nonprofit or church -- can use Kaizen as a framework that supports the submittal, implementation, and inclusion in standards of employee suggestions and ideas.