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Productivity improvement in Milco (Pvt) Ltd using Kaizen concept

Kaizen concept is a “continuous improvement” process which is attending with all participants of the company with the process and that support to the Toyota Production System (TPS) as a philosophy (Imai 2012). Furthermore, that concept is based on a series of questions and initiatives that encourage the identification, analysis and solution of problems, called the Scientific Thinking Mechanism (STM) (Shingo 2010) and it can be used for any type of company.

Milco (Pvt) Ltd has achieved significant productivity and quality improvement using kaizen concept (Sunday Observer 18 March 2018,p.18 ). This institution was established in 1956 under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture and now it has four milk factory located at Colombo, Ambewela, Digana and Polonnaruwa.  This industry has been steadily gaining with the national goal of milk self-sufficiency by 2020.   Over the year 2015, raw milk collection was increased from 61.4 million litres to 64.5 million litres while increasing sales by 5%. But 16 million rupees were losses due to price fluctuation of the raw milk, less productivity, quality losses and high production cost (Annual report 2016).  

During 2016 time periods, the director board of the company was taken the decision to use kaizen concepts to enhance the quality, productivity while reducing the production cost. After conducting the brainstorming session among each segment, they implement a quality circle with the rewarding system on a monthly basis.  Within one month time period, quality circle involve with the packing section was suggested to install blowing systems to sort-out the lower weight milk packets and it will reduce the labour cost as well as the product quality and due to that implementation it was reduced by 2 million (Sunday Observer 18 March 2018,p.18). However, it was very difficult to implement a quality circle within the company due to the negative concept of the employees. Because many of employees recognized quality circle as an extra burden for their duties and its uses by management to cut off the employee strength and other allowances. Therefore kaizen concept is not practical for every company (Vivan, Ortiz & Paliari 2016)

Reference

Imai, M. (2012). Gemba Kaizen: a commonsense approach to a continuous improvement strategy                     (2. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shingo, S. (2010). Kaizen e a arte do pensamento criativo: o mecanismo do pensamento científico.                 Porto Alegre: Bookman.

Vivan ,AL,Ortiz, FAH & Paliari, JC 2016, ‘ Model for Kaizen project development for the                             construction industry’ , ResearchGate. Available from: 
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303915350_Model_for_Kaizen_project_development_for_the_construction_industry>.[ 25 April 2019].


Comments

  1. Mazeen MansoorApril 29, 2019 at 8:22 PM

    Kaizen is mostly suitable for skilled workers and partly applicable to knowledge workers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tharindu Rajapaksha(MBCS)April 29, 2019 at 9:19 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tharindu Rajapaksha(MBCS)April 29, 2019 at 9:21 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tharindu Rajapaksha(MBCS)April 29, 2019 at 9:26 PM

    Good article Nazeer. What you have stated here is true. Kaizens method is not suitable for every company. Milco is a company established under the ministry of agriculture. When it comes to the companies which have government involvement; the employees do not express their ideas without any fear. The employees are such an integral part of Kaizen, the company should foster an environment where the employees are free to give their ideas without fear. So based on these facts, it has more possibility to fail the Kaizens method in such companies.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ChamilkaApril 30, 2019 at 11:38 PM

    The overall goal of Kaizan is to make small changes over a period of time to create improvements within a company. It simply says that small change in now can have a huge impact in future. Therefore if company can implement at least some elements in kaizan philosophy such as quality control, just in time delivery and elimination of waste, then in by 2020 they can easily support government to achieve their national goal of milk-self sufficiency

    ReplyDelete
  6. Razi JalaldeenMay 4, 2019 at 9:57 AM

    Please refer how to include a newspaper article in the reference list.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nismi RaufMay 23, 2019 at 2:34 AM

    A new knowledge on a known sector

    ReplyDelete

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