{"id":130781,"date":"2015-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qmarkets.net\/kaizen-principles-and-practices-and-optimizing-continuous-improvement-through-crowdsourcing\/"},"modified":"2023-04-12T16:06:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T14:06:23","slug":"kaizen-principles-and-practices-and-optimizing-continuous-improvement-through-crowdsourcing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/resources\/article\/kaizen-principles-and-practices-and-optimizing-continuous-improvement-through-crowdsourcing\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowdsourcing Continuous Improvement: Kaizen Principles and Practices for Amplifying Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many companies seek to improve their operations through the documentation of best practices. From personal experience in a large, multinational enterprise technology company, I saw how well-articulated procedures can be beneficial to the immediate users and their successors. However, these reflect only one person or one department\u2019s experience, and lack collective insights.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kaizen
The \u00ab\u00a05 S’s\u00a0\u00bb of Kaizen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Kaizen Management Method is based on the idea that gradual, ongoing change (Japanese: \u201cKai\u201d), is good (\u201czen\u201d), for business. By focusing on small operational improvements on a regular basis, an organization can make significant, continuous improvements<\/a> over time. Kaizen principles and practices can be broken down into \u00ab\u00a05 S’s\u00a0\u00bb. These involve ‘sorting’ business practices (removing unnecessary actions or waste), setting the optimal practices in the best order within workflows, inspecting and improving what works (\u00ab\u00a0shining\u00a0\u00bb), and finally standardising and sustaining these optimized procedures<\/p>\n

Having an idea crowdsourcing platform<\/a> in place can help streamline the continuous improvement process<\/a>, and make implementing Kaizen principles and practices far more efficient.<\/p>\n

Harnessing Collective Intelligence – Harvesting Operational Excellence<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Kaizen<\/p>\n

To truly have an impact, best practices should be leveraged company-wide on a platform to encourage the crowdsourcing<\/a> and sharing of winning ideas, methodologies, processes and other proposed operational improvements. Then best practices can become better through the input of peers, supervisors and management.<\/p>\n

Collective brainstorming is healthy for employees, teams, and the company, while driving the business toward operational excellence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By harnessing collective intelligence<\/a> on a platform, the productive work habits of one individual or department can be expanded, improved, and shared. They can then be implemented universally, achieving the reach of operational excellence<\/a> that best practices are intended to have.<\/p>\n

Banking on Best Practices<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Qmarkets\u2019 Idea Management Software<\/a> is designed to support Kaizen principles and practices. It offers a platform for taking someone\u2019s great idea and sharing it. These are the seeds of gradual, consistent change on a large scale: collective brainstorming, feedback, evaluation and, ultimately, driving change and profits.<\/p>\n

\"Kaizen<\/p>\n

In one relatively small branch of a highly revered regional bank, an employee adopted a new time-saving software application that proved successful in reducing paperwork without compromising compliance. Having received clearance by the bank Manager for its local use, the employee shared the new procedure through the Bank\u2019s personalized Qmarkets Idea Management platform as a best practice case and proposed its use by colleagues in other branches.<\/p>\n

The idea was made available to all staff for evaluation, consideration and discussion \u2013 especially by those for whom it would be most relevant. The proposal was improved \u2013 and questioned \u2013 then adapted based on geographic and divisional needs, and finally implemented to benefit the entire organization, its customers, and the bottom line.<\/p>\n

Using the Idea Management platform<\/a>, the best practice scenario was truly leveraged to enable all employees and branches to improve operations based on this Wisdom of the Crowd and Kaizen methodology.<\/p>\n

Features to Sweeten the Game<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\"KaizenOffering employees another platform for social interaction is only as good as its interface and, in fact, its incentives\u2026even if it is an integral part of the work environment. Our Q-max platform promotes Kaizen through gamification tools, including the accumulation of points, achievement of awards and incentive schemes to encourage users to repeatedly share and enhance best practices over a long period of time.<\/p>\n

The system promotes sustainable productivity and maximum efficiency through remote interaction. This ensures that great ideas are acknowledged, the submitter is rewarded, and the idea is implemented, all within a defined time period. Gamification can also help to foster engagement, and build an employee-centric culture<\/a> that can optimize performance. This is far more effective than corporate mission statements that don\u2019t engage employees at all and are disregarded\u2026and it is far more fun!<\/p>\n

A Profitable Proposal for Getting Back on Track<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

For example, the sharp eye of a railway company employee turned long lines, and no funds to alleviate the congestion, into a win-win scenario by leveraging the Q-Max Idea Management platform.<\/p>\n

\"KaizenCustomers in a Western Europe station were suffering massive waiting times for ticket purchases, which certainly caused some to miss their scheduled trains. Sensitive to the problem, but lacking a budget to add more ticket machines or customer assistants to accelerate ticket sales, the company needed to find an innovative solution to reduce the delays. Familiar with the flow of foot traffic, an astute field-worker drew a map of the platform, assessed the situation, and then published his findings on the Idea Management platform. He proposed that by strategically repositioning ticket machines, waiting times could be reduced by 50%! Peers and management were optimistic and the problematic station adopted the solution.<\/p>\n

The results were so successful, they shared the idea with all stations across the country, involving colleagues throughout the network in saving the railway company lots of money, while increasing customer satisfaction\u2026which is arguably more valuable.<\/p>\n

Kaizen Principles and Practices Support Flexibility<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

One reason Kaizen is easily accepted and highly relevant to the company and its employees is that it is flexible \u2013 not forced. Even when assimilated into the platform, it can be developed as a single module within the larger Idea Management system, or the entire system can be defined through this philosophy.<\/p>\n

\"KaizenEither way, the approach must be flexible and fully configured to each business\u2019 objectives, identity, culture and infrastructure. By enabling very broad technical and visual configuration, Qmarkets helps engage employees in the process of improvements to support operational excellence, while differentiating the company from its competitors. Such changes can help enterprises ensure future prosperity and raise the morale of employees and shareholders alike.<\/p>\n

In fact, an employee\u2019s best work will be done when encouraged to suggest how operations can be improved and to collaborate with others in the organization to offer suggestions. Companies that reward their people for contributing ideas worth implementing, because of their potential impact on the bottom line, will strike gold.<\/p>\n

Want to learn more about achieving corporate operational excellence through implementing Kaizen principles and practices? Contact us<\/a> and we\u2019ll schedule a call with you at your convenience.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many companies seek to improve their operations through the documentation of best practices. From personal experience in a large, multinational enterprise technology company, I saw how well-articulated procedures can be beneficial to the immediate users and their successors. However, these reflect only one person or one department\u2019s experience, and lack collective insights. The Kaizen Management Method is based on the idea that gradual, ongoing change (Japanese: \u201cKai\u201d), is good (\u201czen\u201d), for business. By focusing on small operational improvements on a regular basis, an organization can make significant, continuous improvements over time. Kaizen principles and practices can be broken down into \u00ab\u00a05 S’s\u00a0\u00bb. These involve ‘sorting’ business practices (removing unnecessary actions or waste), setting the optimal practices in the best order within workflows, inspecting and improving what works (\u00ab\u00a0shining\u00a0\u00bb), and finally standardising and sustaining these optimized procedures Having an idea crowdsourcing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[205],"class_list":["post-130781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-best-practices"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150166,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130781\/revisions\/150166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qmarkets.net\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}