Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everybody, without spending much money.

The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved.

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.

Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everybody, without spending much money.

Japanese management practices succeed simply because they are good management practices. This success has little to do with cultural factors. And the lack of cultural bias means that these practices can be - and are - just as successfully employed elsewhere.

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.

I am beginning to see a large-scale introduction of various management tools, philosophies and practices in the service sectors and have a high hope that it will become a global trend.