Practices, Challenges and Prospects of Implementing Kaizen in Ethiopian Companies: Bishoftu Automotive Engineering Company in Focus

Abstract

This paper reports result of a research conducted on the Challenges and Prospects in Implementing Kaizen with empirical evidence drawn from a case study at Bishoftu Automotive Engineering Company, one of the well-known automobile assembling firms in Ethiopia where Kaizen pilot testing and implementation was first carried out.  The research was thus undertaken with the objective of identifying achievements, challenges and prospects at the company that are worth capitalizing on and disseminating to other manufacturing and serving delivery sectors in the country. Towards this, the research employed semi-structured questionnaire as the main tool for gathering primary data. Accordingly, data were collected from 182 randomly selected respondents among the company's workers. The data thus collected were entered into Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and descriptive statistical tools were employed to draw meaning out of these data.

The conditions witnessed by the company's workers indicate the existence of a high degree of centralization and a requirement for vertical communication that are characteristics of mechanistic form of organization and, hence, not favorable for successful implementation of kaizen. Likewise, while implementation of 5S in the company has been perceived to have brought about positive results in improving the work place environment, the fifth phase which involves standardization of the application of the first 4 phases leaves more to be desired. Moreover, analysis of workers' opinion in this study suggests that there are considerable challenges to sustainability resulting from inadequate commitment from management, weak on-job training/capacity building efforts and poor recognition and reward mechanisms for those who register outstanding achievements in kaizen implementation with negative impact on the implementation and sustainability of kaizen in the company. On the other hand, the study showed that, despite the initial not much favorable fit between kaizen culture and the company's organizational culture, a gradual adoption of kaizen over time has made positive contributions for the nurturing of kaizen friendly work cultures.

Overall, while there have been considerable achievements from implementation of kaizen in the company, there are practical challenges in areas of organizational structure, management commitment, reward and recognition and continuous capacity building among others.