Fostering Continuous Improvement: How Kaizen Culture Powers Digital Manufacturing

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Companies that can solve problems, whether internal or external, are ones that win and retain clients in any space.  Problem solving is one part of an enterprise excellence culture that includes people with the right mindsets for growth, quality, and continuous improvement.  Peter Drucker, the renowned business scientist and consultant declared that “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” in that it is culture, more than strategy, that determines an organization’s success.  That’s why we employ Lean thinking and doing at SGK and continue to develop a culture that respects people and their contributions through kaizen.

Kaizen as a way of life at SGK

For best-in-class organizations, kaizen represents more than an event—it is a way of thinking, strategizing, and acting.  It’s an environment in which we work rather than just something that we do.  Kaizen is the way that we respond to client interest.  It’s the way that we solve problems inside the organization.  It’s the spirit that connects our artists and coordinators and client representatives.  Most importantly, it’s what connects our vision, mission, principles, and leadership to the organization and our organization back again.  We don’t just do kaizen, we are kaizen.

Art and Branding are processes

Kaizen and continuous improvement aren’t only for physical manufacturing processes that produce the goods that our clients sell in the marketplace.  Our clients make foods, beverages, medicines, apparel, and a variety of other goods.  We make the things that make those products beautiful and while a shopper is considering a purchase.  We make the designs and the packages that make those products compelling when that shopper lifts a carton from a shelf or views a product in 3D on a website.  Our processes make those experiences and help brands to tell their stories in the same way our clients’ processes make their products.  We combine ingenuity, repeatable steps with qualified, predictable outcomes that delight our clients and create value for them with their customers.  Behind the scenes are people collaborating and solving problems using value stream mapping, developing standardized work, and practicing a special form of leadership at the coalface where the work is done. 

Linking Kaizen with Gemba Leadership

Leaders here are different because they practice gemba leadership.  They believe in going where the work is done, engaging teams and getting the most from the years of experience, their direct observations, and the insights that “experts” can provide.  Our experts are those who do the work daily, who engage with clients and understand their needs, and who deliver beauty and delight on a shelf or on a website.  Going to the source results in better understanding of issues and data, stronger dialog between stakeholders, and alignment to produce output with the fastest lead time, highest quality, and lowest cost.

Delivering customer-centric results

Our clients are the inspiration for our improvement efforts.  There isn’t a single key performance indicator that we measure that doesn’t have a connection to our clients and their needs.  We ask our clients what they want, and we build solutions to deliver them.  Shorter lead times mean speed to market for our clients.  Higher quality means no errors, no product recalls, and no loss of compliance.  Smarter costs mean that productivity can be shared with our clients.  And we do it all in a physically, emotionally, and mentally safe environment where experimentation and innovation are prized, mistakes are regarded as the source of solutions, and people have fun while they work.

 
In my next article, we’ll explore how kaizen events directly involving our clients lead to mutually beneficial results.  I can’t wait to share it with you!