What is quality? A product or service of high quality should satisfy the actual and future needs of consumers, fulfilling their expectations. The Japanese have shown that quality is the key to success in the world markets. Twenty years ago Japanese products were seen by consumers as low-cost low-quality products, today the logo ‘made in Japan’ is synonym of low-cost and high-quality. How have the Japanese companies achieved this change of attitude in consumers? The answer can be summed up in one word: kaizen. Literally kaizen means improvement, but it has a deeper meaning. In a working environment, kaizen means continuous process improvement involving everybody. But more generally, the kaizen philosophy advocates ongoing improvement, not only in working life, but also in personal life and social life. This paper describes the basic management tools that support the kaizen philosophy: goals of management, cross-function management, policy deployment and quality function deployment (QFD), and some of the problems that may arise during its implementation are discussed. Finally, the paper can find some practical examples, performing in one plant from the north of Spain, which describe how to apply these concepts in the areas of safety and productivity.
