I Became a Kaizen Advocate

In the late 1970s, Singapore was going through her growth pains. The country was economically advancing but her productivity was lagging behind. Singapore was highly dependent on manufacturing but finding that finding the extra worker was getting more and more difficult. There had to be a better way.

Japan, meanwhile, was accelerating her growth. Despite the setbacks of World War 2, Japan had, by then, surged ahead of her Western counterparts and was becoming a superpower in the world economy. In a short span of 30 years after World War 2, Japan had accumulated a record trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves to become the world’s second strongest economy after the U.S.

As part of Singapore’s ‘Learn from Japan’ campaign, the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, visited Japan. He came away totally fired up with how Japanese workers went about solving their day-to-day problems. On his return, he directed the Government to start a statutory board, the National Productivity Board (currently called Spring Singapore), with the sole aim of raising workers’ productivity (getting more done with the same or lesser number of people).

One of the primary drivers was the introduction of Quality Control Circles (QCC), a structured team based problem solving approach that quite literally changed the way that Singaporeans and Singapore-based corporations operated. It did not matter whether it was a manufacturing business or a service outfit, the Singapore Government incentivised all staff to be trained on the QCC concept. In effect, it became a national 'indoctrination' programme on productivity or, in organisation speak, it was organisational development at a national level. Quite cool really!

QCC is very much the precursor of Kaizen. While Kaizen is a philosophy, QCC is the nut and bolt in problem-solving. It was THE original U.S. problem solving methodology adopted by the Japanese. Everything about QCC is based on facts and numbers. Little was left to assumption. If they were unsure of the facts, the staff would gather the relevant data and test it.

I became a Kaizen Advocate in the mid-1990s. I was trained in both QCC and QCC facilitation. I led a QCC team consisting of mid-managers and later became a QCC judge as well as taking on the role of the Productivity Manager of the newspaper company that I worked for.

What changed my perspective was seeing how such perceived ‘difficult’ statistical tools could be taught and used by frontline staff, some of whom only had 3 years of education. The project that had the most impact on me was seeing a group of courier motorbike riders resolving their problem – Difficulties in finding proper parking place within the Central Business District (CBD).

These riders had to collect and deliver advertising bromides, unheard of in current internet days, to the ad agencies in the city. However, the city has no designated free parking area. The council had a ‘charge all’ mandate, that is, if these riders did not park in the right spots, they would be fined and quite costly too. And it would not be practical to pay for parking since their roles would require them to move around substantially.

So, they formed a team to resolve this problem. They quantified their current parking habits over a three-week period and identified 3 main places to park their motorbikes as follows:

• Back lane (illegal but safe),
• Side of building (unsafe), and
• Front of building (definitely unsafe).

They found that they had to park 233 times over that period using the above options.

They then examined the root causes using the Fishbone diagram and found that a critical root cause was because riders were not sure of where the possible ‘legal’ parking spots were.

Included in their examination, they revisited the current modus operandi and devised countermeasures for each option, together with action statements. Here is their list of countermeasures:

Subsequently, they implemented their course of action and collected a 3-week 'After' data. This time, the team found that they had managed to reduce their problems to 102 incidents parking illegally, that is a more than 50% reduction from 233 cases.

I am convinced, more than ever, that basic statistical techniques can be taught. When I think of the education qualification of a typical manufacturing worker in South East Asia, I am emboldened.

If we believe in our people, raise the expectation bar, and provide the correct training and environment, everyone can problem-solving systematically using the QCC (Kaizen) approach.

You may say, "I have been there, done that". Having seen it done, it is really not that difficult.