Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management
In this sequel to his popular business/quality management book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success (1986), Imai offers a step forward?continuous improvement (kaizen) applied to the concept of continuous improvement in the workplace (gemba). The book reflects a definite operations bias. Indeed, Imai advocates the removal of all those peripheral things (muda) that cloud the focus of an organization. Some of the principles, such as the need for good housekeeping, seem simplistic, but Imai is on solid ground, demonstrating the practicality of gemba kaizen with a number of abbreviated case studies. The one weakness is the lack of adequate recognition of precedent setters: F.W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1912) and the work of W.A. Shewhart, W.E. Deming, J. Juran, etc. All in all, essential for business collections.?Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, PhiladelphiaCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.