**Pronunciation:** kai-zen. **Kanji:** 改善 — "change for the better." **Core:** Small incremental improvements, made continuously by everyone, compound into large gains. Culture first; tools second. ## Origin Masaaki Imai popularized kaizen in the West (*Kaizen*, 1986). Roots: post-WWII Japanese manufacturing, Deming/Juran quality teaching, Toyota Production System (Ohno, JIT). ## Practice spine - **PDCA** — Plan, Do, Check, Act on a small scale, then standardize - **5S** — Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain - **3 MUs** — muda (waste), muri (overburden), mura (unevenness) - **Gemba** — go see the actual work Kaizen is the cultural engine under Lean/Six Sigma; without it the tools go hollow. ## Personal scale Prefer "walk 10 minutes today" over heroic all-or-nothing plans. Related: [[Limiting Function Diagnosis by Going to the Source of Pain]] (gemba restated); [[Anomalies as Adaptive Learning Pointers]] (small defects as continuous signal). *Source: [Kaizen Institute](https://kaizen.com/what-is-kaizen/); [Investopedia — Kaizen](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/kaizen.asp)*