To assure the prosperity of a firm should be a long-term strategy and the turnover of key managers should be taken into account from the stand point of long-term consideration and not from the monthly or quarterly flavors.

Progress is impossible without the ability to admit mistakes.

I believe that management should focus on two particular areas. One is Gemba (shop floor) and the other is customer (not the shareholder).

There are various non-statistical tools that have been typically developed by lean companies, notably by Toyota for minimizing variability in production, such as standardization, introduction of takt time, synchronization, shortening the total production lead time which I am fond of referring to as non statistical tools.

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.

The standard is not writ on the stone. The definition of the standard is that it is the best way to do the job for now. It should be regarded as a next step to make further improvement.

All of management's efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.