It is important to know the meaning of Kaizen and its modus operandi before understanding its alternatives. This is a continuous improvement process and companies can improve their businesses by adopting it carefully. This application is successfully implemented by a number of departments. Many departments such as services, management, manufacturing, strategy department, human resources, marketing and accounts could also make instant success by the implementation of these applications. If it is applied carefully, companies can generate more profit by removing additional unnecessary work, eliminating waste and introducing new value-added activities. However, the employees must be properly trained for the successful implementation of this process. Then only they can evaluate their activities critically and adopt the most profitable activities. When the employees get positive results, they become more motivated and they try for further improvement.
However, Kaizen is not the only way of improving the efficiency of companies and their businesses. Today, a number of its alternatives are available in the management headspace. They are designed to get profound results to the users.
The kanban system is the first Kaizen alternative. This tool is highly beneficial for the reduction of operation costs and thereby, the companies can eliminate waste and scrap considerably. Companies can create a number of worksites through this system, which are able to give them instant responses to one another through push and pull signals. This ensures proper control of workflow and an effective quality control of products. With kanban, the company can utilize the maximum resources of employees by helping them to achieve maximum output. Kanban is highly powerful and is effective for getting proper control over workflow.
Business process Reengineering (BPR) is the second Kaizen alternative and it is aimed to bring relevant and necessary changes in the organizational structure of a company. In order to provide more profit for the company, BPR implements strategies continuously in an ethical and effective way. Processing of data, materials and financial outcome are the three important elements of BPR. It targets mainly on the departments of organizations, the place where major business processes are undertaken. After visualizing the operations, BPR creates strategies. By following these strategies carefully, companies can cut down costs, increase usage of scarce resources and ultimately maximize profits. This is possible by redesigning, retooling and re-orchestrating the basic operations
Modular Functional Deployment (MFD) is the third category of Kaizen alternative. MFD, a structured process, identifies the best design of the product, which is able to cover its development from all possible angles. It aims to deliver the products successfully to the right audience. Such a way, they can attain satisfaction. MFD is also responsible for lots of critical factors such as product strategy, brand image and customer requirement.
All these Kaizen alternatives concentrate on the maximization of profit by using least possible resources.