Five minutes at Mill Lane: At the Mill Lane bakehouse the first batch goes into the oven at 2 a.m. One of the six bakers notices that she walks to the back shelf for salt and yeast about twenty times a night.
She suggests moving the tubs and the scales next to the mixer. Priti, the head baker, tries it for a week. It saves five minutes every night, and it costs nothing.
That is continuous improvement (in Japanese, kaizen): many small improvements, made all the time, by the people who do the work. No single change is dramatic.
Added up over months, they are. And the moment one change is in place, the next one starts.
What makes it kaizen
Small steps
Each change is a small one (an incremental improvement): moving the salt, not rebuilding the bakehouse. It can be to a product, a process or a service.
It never finishes
Improvement is a regular habit, not a project with an end date. Today's better way is the starting point for the next idea.
Everyone takes part
Bakers, Priti, and Lena and Marco as directors all look for improvements. Kaizen involves workers at every level, not just managers.
The people who do the job fix it
The bakers are trusted to spot problems and put them right at the start (they are empowered), instead of waiting for someone in an office to notice.
Planned and checked
A change is tried, measured and kept only if it works. It is a planned, controlled step, not a guess made in a hurry.
One big leap
- The second oven. Lena and Marco plan a $45,000 deck oven: one large change, decided by the directors.
- Big and rare. It costs a lot, takes months to plan, and happens once.
- All at once. The day it arrives, capacity jumps.
Many small steps (kaizen)
- The salt tubs. A baker moves them next to the mixer: one small change, suggested by the person doing the job.
- Small and constant. Each costs little or nothing, and there is another next week.
- Bit by bit. No single week looks different; the year does.
A one-off change is not kaizen: Buying the new oven may be a good idea, but it is not kaizen. Kaizen is the steady stream of small changes that goes on before, during and after big ones.
Two words to hold together: small, and continuous. A change that is small but never repeated, or continuous talk that never changes anything, is not kaizen either.
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Kaizen needs a routine, or good ideas are forgotten by the morning.
The Mill Lane routine
- The idea board. There is a board on the wall where anyone can write an idea.
- The Friday meeting. Every Friday, at the end of the shift, Priti and the six bakers meet for fifteen minutes.
- One idea to try. They choose one idea and agree how to try it.
Spot and suggest
Anyone, any night
- A baker sees time or material being wasted
- She writes the idea on the board
Try it small
One week
- The Friday meeting picks one idea
- The bakers try it for a week
Check the numbers
Did it work?
- Minutes saved each night
- Loaves thrown away each night
Keep it or drop it
The new normal
- If it works, it becomes the way everyone does it
- If not, it is dropped at no great cost
| Idea from the board | Cost | What it saves each night |
|---|---|---|
| Salt, yeast and scales moved next to the mixer | $0 | 5 minutes of walking |
| An outline painted on the wall for each tool | $30 | 4 minutes of hunting for tools |
| A timer on each proving rack | $40 | 10 fewer over-risen loaves thrown away |
| Oven temperature checked and written down before each batch | $0 | 5 fewer burnt loaves thrown away |
| All four together | $70 | 9 minutes, and 15 fewer loaves wasted (40 down to 25) |
Small, then big: The bakehouse bakes six nights a week, 312 nights a year.
Time. 9 minutes a night × 312 nights = 2,808 minutes, about 47 hours a year.
Waste. 15 fewer loaves a night × 312 nights = 4,680 loaves. At $0.90 of ingredients each, that is 4,680 × $0.90 = $4,212 a year, for ideas that cost $70.
Why do the bakers find these savings and not the directors? Because they are there at 2 a.m. They see the walk to the back shelf and the tray of flat loaves. Kaizen puts the people closest to the work in charge of improving it.
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Earlier you met lean production: making what customers want with less waste and greater efficiency. Lean production has methods.
Two methods of lean production
- Just-in-time, which you have also met, cuts the waste of holding stock.
- Kaizen is the other method: it hunts waste everywhere else, one small step at a time, and keeps going after the big changes are finished.
Wasted time
- Walking to the back shelf for salt and yeast
- Hunting for the right scraper or tin
- Waiting for the oven to reach its temperature
Wasted materials
- Over-risen loaves that go flat and are thrown away
- Burnt loaves from an oven that ran too hot
- Flour spilt when sacks are opened on the floor
Wasted effort and space
- Carrying trays twice because the racks are in the wrong place
- Benches cluttered with things nobody uses
- Two bakers doing the same check
An umbrella, not one tool: Kaizen is a way of thinking that holds many techniques under it. What joins them is the habit: always look for the next small improvement.
Techniques under the umbrella
- Aiming for no faulty loaves at all (zero defects).
- A tidy, disciplined workplace where every tool has its place.
- A card that signals when more of something is needed (kanban).
- Getting rid of waste wherever it shows up.
Kaizen and the methods you have already met
- Just-in-time. With little stock in the bakehouse, a late flour delivery or a slow step shows up at once, and kaizen fixes it. Both need an efficient, flexible supply chain: Valley Grain must be able to deliver when Mill Lane needs flour.
- Quality circles. The Friday meeting works like a quality circle: a small group doing similar work, meeting to solve problems. Kaizen is wider: every level of the business, every night.
- Quality assurance and TQM. Kaizen shares their idea that quality is everyone's job, and that it is better to make the loaf right at the start than to throw it away at the end.
Lean and kaizen in one line: Lean production is the goal: less waste, greater efficiency. Kaizen is one method of reaching it, and the one that never stops.
After a year of Friday meetings, Lena and Marco look at what kaizen has done at Mill Lane, and at what it has cost.
What Mill Lane gains
- Lower costs. Less waste: $4,212 of ingredients a year no longer goes in the bin.
- Better quality. Fewer burnt and flat loaves reach the shops, because problems are fixed at the start.
- Motivated bakers. Seeing their own idea on the wall gives them recognition and responsibility, and for many workers that motivates as much as money.
- Low risk. Each change is small and cheap, so a bad idea costs a week and is easy to undo.
What it costs
- Slow. The gains are small and come bit by bit; there is no quick fix.
- No leap. When Station Road opens in September 2026 the bakehouse needs more loaves than one oven can bake at 600 an hour. Moving the salt tubs will not produce them; only the new oven will.
- Time and training. Fifteen paid minutes a week for seven people, and bakers who need to learn how to measure and test an idea.
- Trust. A manager who gives orders and ignores ideas kills it; so does the fear that saving time will cost someone their job.
The trap: saving time can look like losing jobs: If kaizen saves enough hours that one baker is no longer needed, the other five stop suggesting ideas. Why help find the saving that could be your own job?
Businesses that cut jobs after kaizen often find the ideas dry up and experienced staff leave. Lena and Marco promise that saved time goes into the new Station Road shop's bread, not into redundancies.
What makes kaizen work
Leaders who listen
Priti asks for ideas and acts on them. A manager who makes every decision alone (an autocratic style) leaves nothing for kaizen to do.
Time set aside
Fifteen minutes every Friday, paid, on the rota. Ideas squeezed in after a long shift are the first thing to go.
Ideas acted on quickly
An idea on the board that nobody tries tells the bakers their ideas do not matter. The next one is never written.
Nobody loses out for an idea
Savings are used to grow, not to cut staff, so every baker is safe to point out waste.
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How this comes up: Kaizen comes in a case about a business that already uses it: a short question first, then the business's other methods.
The question types
- State two features (2 marks). State two features of continuous improvement (kaizen). No description is needed, just two different features.
- The other lean method. The same case then moves on to the business's other lean method, such as just-in-time.
- Longer questions about improving quality. Kaizen is one of the options to weigh: what it gains against what it costs, in that business.
The two-mark pattern
- Read the question word. Features: what kaizen is and how it works, not what it does for the business.
- Pick two different features. Small, regular improvements; involves every level; empowers workers to fix things at the start; planned and checked; an umbrella for many techniques.
- A few words each. Two short lines, one feature per line.
Two traps: Feature or benefit. 'It motivates the workers' and 'it lowers costs' say what kaizen does for the business. They are benefits, not features.
One feature said twice. 'Small changes' and 'incremental improvements' are the same feature. The second one adds nothing; choose something about who takes part or how changes are made.
State two features of continuous improvement (kaizen).
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