At present I am working with a researcher/consultant from the Japan
Management Association translating and adapting their latest work for
European companies, including their work on Total Productivity Management,
a proprietary technique of JMA which aims to integrate shopfloor Kaizen
activities with corporate vision.
My experience of LO is through the Fieldbook, the Systems Thinker
newsletter, attending a Peter Senge workshop in England just over a year
ago, and also attending the MIT LO conference in Boston this year. One of
my colleagues also attended the Pegasus conference last Fall.
We are now trying to use LO techniques to develop a systems perspective on
our work, particularly in terms of the sustainability of Kaizen, and the
management challenges of shopfloor empowerment. We are most interested in
concepts such as Daniel Kim's Vision Deployment Matrix, and Chris Argyris'
work on organisational defences and double loop learning.
My direct contact with Japanese consultants and experience of their
approaches in use has led me to believe that the translation of Kaizen as
Continuous Improvement is inadequate, and that the meaning of Kaizen is
more akin to the LO concept of Personal Mastery.
I would be pleased to hear from anyone with experience of the
implementation of Kaizen and Lean Production through LO principles and
techniques.
--prodeuro@atlas.co.uk (Malcolm Jones)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>