The zipper on my trusty knapsack recently failed after many years of constant service. Searching for a replacement, I stumbled upon an item that hints at what kaizen really means as a part of Japanese culture. It can be enlightening to anybody who really wants to understand Lean.

The item comes from the American webpage of Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, more familiar to those of us who, uh, read zipper pulls, as YKK. The company was founded in 1934 by Yoshida Tadao. The website addresses Yoshida-san’s philosophy of business:

“Mr. Yoshida called his philosophy the Cycle of Goodness. It means that “No one prospers unless he renders benefit to others.” According to his philosophy, Mr. Yoshida believed he must manufacture only useful, high quality zippers that would benefit, or enhance, the end-use goods in which they were installed. Since his product was a component in his customers’ products, and the critical moving part, he believed it would have to perform perfectly over a long period of time so that those end-use goods would last longer and perform better than others on the market. When they did, all involved would benefit….”

People with exposure to Japan may recognize this as the cultural face, as opposed to a textbook definition, of kaizen. It is an expression of a philosophy that has long been deeply ingrained in Japanese culture. To make a Lean transformation work in your company you must understand the basis of Yoshida-san’s philosophy.

In the USA, people will explain that kaizen just means improvement, that it comes from the Japanese characters for change and good, hence improvement. That is an absolutely true — and an absolutely trivial — explanation. But trivial Explanation leads not to Understanding. To understand what kaizen means in Japanese culture, let’s start with the written word.

Writing came to Japan in the fifth century. Buddhist monks introduced Chinese characters, bringing words, ideas, and ideograms associated with Buddhist thought. Some of these fifth-century words and ideas still have essentially the same form in both languages. Kaizen is one such. It uses the same characters and has similar meaning and pronunciation — “gaishan” — in China.

The long association between kaizen and Buddhism in Japan suggests kaizen is significant in Japanese culture. Because of the Buddhist cultural influence, a better translation of “zen” would be “virtue” or “virtuous”. This better translates the central idea of kaizen.

It’s a subtle but important difference. You can, for example, have a good dinner, but can you have a virtuous dinner? I think not. With zen translated as “virtue”, kaizen becomes not mere “change good” or “improvement” but “virtuous change”.

But what exactly is virtue? In a Buddhist-influenced culture, there are a number of facets to virtue.

First, we can say virtue is generally associated with wisdom. For a change to be virtuous, the change should come as a result of some new knowledge or insight.

Second, virtue is associated with permanence and reliability. For a change to be virtuous, it should be more or less permanent, something that people can rely on.

Third, virtue is a benefit to the society as a whole. If I do something by which only I gain, that’s fine, but it really isn’t kaizen in the sense of being virtuous.

Fourth, virtue is earned. Bad weather eventually improves. That’s improvement, but is it kaizen? We have no claim on such improvement. To be kaizen, we must have done something, and that something must be virtuous. We must earn that claim.

None of these things seem consistent with the trivial American explanation of kaizen. But if we look carefully we will see that they are entirely consistent with the best, most informed understandings of Lean practice and Deming’s teachings.

Consider Mike Rother’s descriptions of the improvement kata.

The improvement kata begins with certain, though limited, knowledge concerning a problem and its environment. The kata requires research, developing and testing ideas about the nature of the problem, learning from our investigation, and trying again. With each cycle of the improvement kata we gain insight. Gain enough understanding and insight and the problem can often be mastered. Clearly, cultivating insight and wisdom are part of the improvement kata and part of true kaizen — part of virtuous change.

Edwards Deming applied statistical methods to manufacturing with a goal of permanently improving the reliability of a manufacturing process. In Japan it has long been considered a great shame to be unreliable. To change and become reliable after having been unreliable, whether in business by using Deming’s methods, or in your private life by personal introspection and action, is a virtuous change. It is kaizen.

The third idea, that virtuous change also benefits others, is consistent with a little-noted habit of Toyota: If Toyota works with a supplier to improve a part by reducing the cost of production, the savings are split three ways, between Toyota, Toyota’s suppliers, and Toyota’s customers. Toyota certainly has the economic power to say to the supplier, “We want all the savings.” But they don’t. They understand that more people benefiting in the long run beats greed and fancy quarterly reports in the short run.

Finally, when we have done these first three things, when we can go home at the end of the day and say we have learned something useful and important, that we now have the knowledge to create a permanent improvement, and that we and others will benefit from what we have learned, we’ve earned the right to claim virtuous change. That’s kaizen. That’s what Yoshida-san understood.

Copyright 2015 by Paul G. Spring. All rights reserved.