Kaizen Quotes

A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.

Sometimes the best kaizen is no kaizen at all.

All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain's fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.

If you are going to do kaizen continuouslyyou've got to assume that things are a mess. Too many people just assume that things are all right the way they are.   Aren't you guys convinced that the way you're doing things is the right way? That's no way to get anything done. Kaizen is about changing the way things are.   If you assume that things are all right the way they are, you can't do kaizen. So change something!

The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people's creativity. People don't go to Toyota to 'work' they go there to 'think'.

Where there is no Standard there can be no Kaizen

Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everybody, without spending much money.

Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new.

Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

Kaizen and innovation are the two major strategies people use to create change. Where innovation demands shocking and radical reform, all kaizen asks is that you take small, comfortable steps toward improvement.

The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life - be it our working life, our social life, or our home life - deserves to be constantly improved.

You can't do kaizen just once or twice and expect immediate results. You have to be in it for the long haul.

Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time

Why not make the work easier and more interesting so that people do not have to sweat?  The Toyota style is not to create results by working hard. It is a system that says there is no limit to people’s creativity.  People don’t go to Toyota to ‘work’ they go there to ‘think’

All of management's efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.

The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.

Many good American companies have respect for individuals, and practice Kaizen and other TPS {Toyota Production System} tools. But what is important is having all of the elements together as a system. It must be practiced every day in a very consistent manner–not in spurts–in a concrete way on the shop floor.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

The message of the Kaizen strategy is that not a day should go by without some kind of improvement being made somewhere in the company.

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

There's no good idea that cannot be improved on.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

To make the quickest progress, you don't have to take huge leaps. You just have to take baby steps-and keep on taking them. In Japan, they call this approach kaizen, which literally translates as 'continual improvement.' Using kaizen, great and lasting success is achieved through small, consistent steps. It turns out that slow and steady is the best way to overcome your resistance to change.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought; what we think we become.

Small actions are at the heart of kaizen. By taking steps so tiny that they seem trivial or even laughable, you'll sail calmly past obstacles that have defeated you before. Slowly - but painlessly! - you'll cultivate an appetite for continued success and lay down a permanent new route to change.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.

As you experience success in applying kaizen to clear goals like weight loss or career advancement, remember to hold onto its essence: an optimistic belief in our potential for continuous improvement.

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lives a great street-sweeper who did his job well'

To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

If at first you don't succeed, try hard work.

If at first you don't succeed, try management.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.

Those who can’t change their minds can’t change anything.

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.