Word: kaizen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...industry. Toyota is weathering the recession far better than its American counterparts not just because it has been making the fuel-efficient automobile customers wanted - though that helped a great deal - but because the Japanese giant makes a fetish out of efficiency. (The term for it in Japanese is kaizen, or continual improvement.) Even Wal-Mart, once environmental Enemy Number One, has made its Byzantine supply chain greener and more efficient - and spreading those values to its network of suppliers. The message is sinking in: a 2008 survey by Johnson Controls found that 72% of building managers are now paying...
...Japan last week, Mazda's new American employees were learning things they never heard much about at the union hall. In particular, they were lectured about the Japanese tradition of kaizen, meaning a worker's commitment to finding ways to do his job better and more efficiently. On the Hofu assembly line, a group of Americans clutching stopwatches and clipboards hovered around Kazuyuki Toda, a Japanese worker, as he demonstrated how to do a job poorly, with too much muda, or wasted motion. The Americans were then asked to suggest ways of doing the job faster. Their ideas ranged from...
...like Toyota, which overcame consumer prejudice in part by inventing kaizen, a manufacturing process and corporate mantra translated as "continuous improvement," Hyundai has rapidly built up regard for its products through an almost fanatical attention to Getting It Right. Consumer Reports magazine recently named the Sonata the most reliable car in the U.S. And Hyundai rose to second place in J.D. Power and Associates' 2004 survey of initial car quality, tied with Honda and trailing only Toyota. Six years ago, Hyundai ranked among the worst in terms of initial defects. The comeback "is astounding," says Chance Parker, executive director...
...pressure and an obsessive student of the game who reviews videotapes of old tournaments for clues about how to play each hole. He works hard at building his strength and honing his shots. But what is most remarkable about Woods is his restless drive for what the Japanese call kaizen, or continuous improvement. Toyota engineers will push a perfectly good assembly line until it breaks down. Then they'll find and fix the flaw and push the system again. That's kaizen. That's Tiger. It's also Tiger's buddy Michael Jordan, who worked as hard on defense...
...such an apparent slump would be depicted by some golf commentators and fellow pros jealous of Woods' early success and fame. The Masters was a fluke, they would say; Woods was a flash in the pan. But Woods didn't hesitate. He and Harmon went to work in a kaizen sequence of 1) pounding hundreds of practice balls, 2) reviewing tapes of the swing, and 3) repeating both the above...