Purpose and benefits

It is important to recognise the importance of the commonsense approach of gemba (shop floor) kaizen to quality improvement, as against the technology-only approach to quality practised in the west.
The production system (batch production) employed by over 90 percent of all the companies in the world is one of the biggest obstacles to quality improvement. A conversion from batch to JIT/Lean production system should be the most urgent task for any manufacturing company today in order to survive in the next millennium.