Dear Andrew,

Returning to the issue of skeptical examination of organizations and
processes, I will briefly address phenomena such as Triz, Kaizen, and
Six Sigma. A massive scientific literature in peer-reviewed journals
allows you to examine them. They are also the subject of a larger
literature of books and industry-based articles.

You seemed to suggest that Kaizen, Six Sigma, and Triz are examples of
phenomena related to co-creation and the Humantific approach. You state
that these phenomena should be subjected to critical thinking. They are.
Kaizen, Six Sigma and Triz have been subject to serious inquiry and
critical review over the past six decades with a vast scholarly and
scientific literature to demonstrate this.

Kaizen, Six Sigma and Triz are not specific to design or design
management. They are well known in engineering, general management,
operations management, logistics, information technology, and
manufacturing, as well as in those areas of industrial design or product
design engineering that move from the studio to the factory. These
issues involve a wide range of businesses and industries where
manufacturing and value creation play a role, and Kaizen also applies to
services.

Kaizen is probably the most important for designers. Six Sigma is
relevant but remote. Triz is one of many innovation and problem-solving
processes.

Kaizen, Six Sigma and Triz should be linked to such words as culture,
cultivation, and agriculture. The processes that these terms designate
involve productivity, innovation, and the cultures that sustain them in
organizational life.

Kaizen is a Japanese word referring to the continuous improvement
process used in manufacturing. A quick search of peer-reviewed
literature yields over 1,700 hits and a diligent search will yield many
more. Google scholar gives over 25,000 hits.

Six Sigma is a process of statistical quality control. The term refers
to the percentage of defective products in large-scale production runs
of millions or more units. Six Sigma refers to 3.44 defects per million,
a 99.99966% yield of good products per million. A quick search of the
peer reviewed literature gives nearly 10,000 journal articles in
management, manufacturing, logistics, engineering, technology,
operations management, design for production, and related fields. Google
Scholar gives nearly 34,000 hits.

Triz is a problem solving method that emerged among inventors,
engineers, and scientists in the Soviet Union at the end of the Second
World War. A quick search of the peer-reviewed journal literature yields
about 700 hits. A careful search through several databases would yield
far more. Google Scholar gives over 31,000 hits on Triz.

While Triz and such Triz-derived methods were quiet for a while in
recent years, there has always been a group of hard-core thinkers
working on Triz. Call them a cult if you wish. These cultists are
generally engineers, operations management experts, inventors, applied
physicists, and the kind of people who study patents for fun. Designers
apply Triz methods or similar systems to analyze and solve problems and
to create inventive solutions.

Few designers or design managers work on the level of six sigma control
because few designers are responsible for million-unit production runs.
Six Sigma began as a measure of statistical quality. Six Sigma took off
as a process in the 1980s when Motorola chairman Bob Galvin challenged
his firm to improve the quality of Motorola products beyond previous
levels. The Six Sigma process achieved wide public recognition in the
1990s when General Electric made Six Sigma quality a focus of the GE
core strategy. Six Sigma is both a benchmark and a specific, detailed
program for achieving benchmark goals.

Kaizen, in contrast, is a cultural process of continuous improvement
that applies to many forms of manufacturing and service industries.
Kaizen generally incorporates a program of statistical quality control.

Both Kaizen and Six Sigma trace their intellectual lineage to Walter
Shewhart. In the 1920s, Shewhart worked at the Hawthorne Plant of
Western Electric, a firm that made equipment for Bell Telephone.
Shewhart was to become a mentor of W. Edwards Deming. In the late 1940s,
Deming influenced the rebirth of Japanese industry with a combination of
statistical quality control and leadership for cultural renewal that
gave birth to Kaizen.

If you’d like a broad overview of Kaizen and its importance in the
automobile industry, read David Halberstam’s (1986) book, The
Reckoning. Halberstam focuses on the clash between Ford and Nissan set
against the global background of industrial development since the late
1800s. In contrast, Jeffrey Liker focuses on the specific kaizen
process. You can get a good view in Liker’s (2003) book, The Toyota
Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer,
and the Liker and Hoseus (2008) book with Michael Hoseus, Toyota
Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way.

W. Edwards Deming laid a foundation for Kaizen in his 14 principles and
what he described as a system of profound knowledge. If you’d like to
understand the spirit of continuous improvement that requires inspired
leadership linked with effective process, you might want to read W.
Edwards Deming’s (2000b) classic book, Out of the Crisis, now
reprinted in a new edition, or the shorter and more accessible New
Economics for Industry, Government, Education (Deming 2000a).

If these issues interest you, the web is rich in reliable resources on
Deming’s approach. The Swiss Deming Institute is a not-for-profit
organization offering a rich array of free resources at URL:

  http://www.deming.ch/

The web offers massive resources on Kaizen, Six Sigma, and Triz, some
good, some not so good. Once you know enough about Kaizen, Six Sigma, or
Triz to find your way around, the web is a useful supplement. The
peer-reviewed literature will help you to get started.

Any phenomenon that leads to productivity in business and industry has
potential for consulting. Anything with consulting potential is open to
abuse as buzz-words and fees come into play. Kaizen, Six Sigma, and Triz
are not inherently problematic. With proper implementation, these
processes reduce inventory, costs, and waste while increasing end-user
satisfaction, product performance, and sustainability. This adds value
through the entire value network, making companies and the jobs they
create more durable while generating taxes and creating social benefits
of many kinds. 

To embed Kaizen or Deming methods in a company requires respect for the
workers, the customers, and the community. This is where the relation
between these process and culture meet. To practice Kaizen or Deming
methods requires a robust organizational culture. With Karen Fu’s note
on succinct posts in mind, I’ve gone one too long, so I will avoid the
detailed examples. You’ll find them in the books.

An industrial culture of generative respect is crucial to the future of
democratic societies. We require business and industry to sustain our
democracies and meet the needs of those who live in them. For this
reason, I respect Kaizen and Deming’s profound knowledge.

Warm wishes,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3
9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design

--

References


Deming, W. Edwards. 2000a. The New Economics for Industry, Government,
Education. 2nd Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Deming, W. Edwards. 2000b. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The MIT Press.

Halberstam, David. 1986. The Reckoning. New York: William Morrow and
Company.

Liker, Jeffrey. 2003. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the
World’s Greatest Manufacturer. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Liker, Jeffrey, and Michael Hoseus. 2008. Toyota Culture: The Heart and
Soul of the Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill.

--

Andrew King wrote:

—snip—

… I have long held reservations about such design and design management
related phenomena as ‘Triz’, ‘Kaizen’, ‘Six Sigma’ etc. I
have no definitive opinion on these either, but I feel a sceptical
examination is advisable.

—snip—

Keith Russell wrote:

—snip—

In talking about cults we need to remember that “cult” shares its
origins with “culture” and “cultivate”.

—snip—