The impact of Kaizen: Assessing the intensive Kaizen training of auto-parts suppliers in South Africa

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The impact of Kaizen: Assessing the intensive Kaizen training of auto-parts suppliers in South Africa
 
Creator Otsuka, Keijiro Ben-Mazwi, Nkumbuzi
 
Subject — Kaizen; managerial ability; management training; enterprise performance; automotive industry; auto-parts industry; social cohesion; South Africa
Description Background: There has been a growing recognition that the most critical missing factor impeding the growth and productivity of manufacturing enterprises in developing countries is entrepreneurs with strong managerial abilities. As Kaizen requires strong communication and cooperation between managers and shop-floor workers, social cohesion between them seems to be a prerequisite for its successful implementation.Aim: The question arises whether Kaizen can improve efficiency in management in a place like South Africa, a country marked by serious ethnic divisions. Therefore, the aim in this study is to assess the impact of an intensive Kaizen training programme in South Africa.Setting: So an intensive Kaizen training programme was implemented at eight randomly selected automotive parts-suppliers in the three key automotive regions in South Africa from 2016 to 2019.Method: A combination of a standard survey questionnaire and informal interviews was used to collect the production and management data. Given our relatively small sample size, the analysis is descriptive in nature.Results: Evidence shows that Kaizen, a Japanese management system, is indeed effective in improving the performance of enterprises in developing countries.Conclusion: The Kaizen method proves to be so successful in improving efficiency in South Africa that it justifies scaling up such a training programme in the future.
 
Publisher AOSIS Publishing
 
Contributor Japan International Cooperation Agency
Date 2022-01-18
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajems.v25i1.4093
 
Source South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences; Vol 25, No 1 (2022); 9 pages 2222-3436 1015-8812
 
Language eng
 
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https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4093/2460 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4093/2461 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4093/2462 https://sajems.org/index.php/sajems/article/view/4093/2463
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Keijiro Otsuka, Nkumbuzi Ben-Mazwi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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