Kaizen's example

Okey, let's stop discussing about the theory of kaizen for a while. A theory won’t give anything for the achievement of kaizen, except for speakers or teachers. The most important thing of a theory is implementation.

I think everybody agree that GM has many good managers, world-class-managers indeed. But, what happens to GM recently is part of the miss-implementation of their excellence theory. I remember one of my classes that all discussions is about theory. Yes, in a class we discuss about theories, but in this class, all participants, including the teacher, were discussing something that is absurd. In my opinion, and you may agree or not, all theories won’t give us benefits until they can be implemented well in solving our problems. So is kaizen.

Let’s go back to kaizen. How can we implement kaizen? Okey. Let’s begin with a simple thing. Have you ever noticed sprags when you parked your car? Sprag is bricks or concrete blocks to stop car, so it won’t go back too far. How many sprag for each car? In some parking lots, at least what I’ve seen, there are two sprags. Both for left and right rear wheel, as shown in picture below.

Then, have you ever thought how many sprags needed for a hundred cars parking lot? Yes, you can test your kids to calculate it. Two hundreds sprags are needed. Does it really need to use two sprags for each car?

Let’s reduce it into a sprag per-car, as shown below.

Does it reduce the function? Is it enough to use a sprag? Yes. It’s enough. It’s only a sprag needed for each car. It won’t reduce the function to stop the car. Cars will stop right after one of its wheels bumped the sprag.

What if the car has right hand side driving system (driver is on the right hand side)? Well, simply put the sprag on the right. In fact, while the driver is parking his car, he only able to see one sprag, which is on the same line where he is sitting. We won’t be able to see the other side. So, it’s only a sprag is useful for him. What if it was at the country using left hand side driving system? Simply put the sprag on the left hand side. What if there were two different driving cars park at the same parking lot? Since there are many imported cars from different driving system country enter the country. Well, that could happen. But the number of different driving-system-cars at the country can be considered insignificant. We don’t need to build different road for different cars, do we?