Andrea Chiarini, Claudio Baccarani and Vittorio Mascherpa
The purpose of this paper is to compare principles from the original Toyota Production System (TPS), the Toyota Way 2001 and Kaizen philosophy with principles derived from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare principles from the original Toyota Production System (TPS), the Toyota Way 2001 and Kaizen philosophy with principles derived from Japanese Zen Buddhism. The paper would also like to enlarge the debate concerning some lessons learnt from Japanese culture in order to avoid Lean implementation failures.
Design/methodology/approach
The original English version of Taiichi Ohno’s book dedicated to the TPS, the Toyota Way 2001 and other relevant papers regarding Kaizen were reviewed and analyzed. The principles that emerged from the review of this literature were then compared with similar philosophical principles from Japanese Soto Zen Buddhism. The literature concerning Zen philosophy was methodically analyzed and categorized using the content analysis.
Findings
The results of this research show many theoretical parallelisms as well as lessons for practitioners, in particular referring to principles such as Jidoka, just-in-time, waste identification and elimination, challenge, Kaizen, Genchi Genbutsu, respect for people and teamwork.
Research limitations/implications
Analysis and results are mainly based on the literature that was found, reviewed and categorized, along with the knowledge of authors on Zen philosophy. Results could differ depending on the literature reviewed and categorized.
Practical implications
The results of this research bring food for thought to practitioners in terms of lessons learnt from Japanese culture, Toyota principles and management style in order to avoid Lean implementation failures.
Originality/value
This is one of the first papers which compares Lean-TPS and Kaizen principles with the Zen philosophy to try to learn lessons for succeeding in Lean implementation.
Details
Keywords
Claudio Baccarani, Vittorio Mascherpa and Marco Minozzo
– The purpose of this paper is to evaluate connections between the practice of mindfulness meditation and individual and organisational well-being.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate connections between the practice of mindfulness meditation and individual and organisational well-being.
Design/methodology/approach
A direct randomised study conducted on a groups of persons involved in various work activities through a programme of Zen meditation courses and a comparison between the situation of well-being found before and after taking part in the courses, assessed in the light of results obtained from a control group that had not taken part in the courses.
Findings
The comparison and analysis of results showed that the group of participants taking part in the meditation training obtained a significant increase in certain indicators relating in particular to subjectively perceived well-being, as regards attention and concentration as well as in a physiological indicator measuring stress reduction.
Originality/value
The study brought to the place of business a tool traditionally used almost exclusively in relation to the personal sphere, evaluating its potential in terms not only of individual well-being but also in terms of efficiency and productivity.