kaizen
KAIZEN Kaizen (Ky zen) is a Japanese business philosophy first made famous by Masaaki Imai. In his book Kaizen: the Key to Japans Competitive Success (1986, McGraw-Hill), which first introduced the Kaizen concept to the Western corporate world, Masaaki Imai defined it as: "a means of continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working life. At the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement involving everyone - managers and workers alike. The Kaizen business strategy involves everyone in an organization working together to make improvements without large capital investments." The word Kaizen itself is derived from two different Japanese words, kai and zen. ... The interesting thing is that there is no equivalent word to Kaizen in the English language. Kaizen is a culture of sustained continuous improvement focusing on eliminating waste in all systems and processes of an organization.