The Kaizen Blitz: A Primer
July 2, 2015
Hosted by Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Episode Description
Where did the Kaizen Blitz originate? If you say Mother Toyota, you are only partly right. Tune in to Visual Workplace Radio this week as Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual workplace expert, travels into history and tells you the real story behind when and how the so-called “blitz” (not its real name) arrived on our shores and what happened when it did. Do you know that the first kaizen blitz (not its name at the time) was held in 1986 at Jakes Brakes in Windsor Locks, Connecticut—and it almost closed that site down? Dazzling in reducing flow distance and flow time, that first event surfaced everything that was right with the blitz format—and everything that was wrong, very wrong, with it. And both that right and that wrong were perfect duplications of how Toyota conducted its own blitzes in Japan, with this one difference: never at Mother Toyota, the OEM. The blitz format was use for the supply chain only. Tune in. Learn the history that insiders know but don’t talk about.
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Business Channel
Visual Workplace Radio: Let the Workplace Speak offers the best in practical tools, methods, and strategies for improvement leaders who want to apply workplace visuality and harness its remarkable cultural and bottom line contribution. Visuality: you can’t get to excellence without it.
Each week, award-winning author and foremost visual workplace expert, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth, targets new learning and applications through a range of formats, case studies, interviews with business leaders and topic experts.
Whether yours is a factory, hospital, military depot, bank, office or dry cleaners, get informed, get inspired, get visual.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D.
Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, PhD, is president and founder of Visual Thinking Inc. and The Visual-Lean Institute(r), a training, consulting, and research firm in visual workplace technologies. Over a period of 30 years, Dr. Galsworth has codified the field of visuality into a single coherent framework of thinking and application called the 10-Doorway Model.
In 2005, Dr. Galsworth established the Visual-Lean(r) Institute where in-house and external trainers are licensed in nine core visual workplace courses.
Four of her nine courses are now available as on-line training systems (English/Spanish), with more to come. Galsworth is author of seven books, including two Shingo Prize winners: Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking and Work That Makes Sense, available from her website and Amazon.
Dr. Galsworth began in the 1980s as the head of training/development at Productivity Inc. She worked closely with Dr. Ryuji Fukuda to adapt the CEDAC(r) method for western companies, and with Dr. Shigeo Shingo to develop, among many things, poka-yoke for the West. She was principal developer of Visual Factory, TEIAN (operator-led suggestion systems), and the X-Type Matrix.
A Fellow on the Shingo Institute Faculty and former Baldrige and Shingo Examiners, Galsworth has led study missions to some of the world’s finest companies, including in Japan. Dr. Galsworth lives in New England where she happily works, hikes, and writes.
