One of Kaizen's fundamental principles is "respect for people." At Toyota, the ancestor of this system, this principle is one of the main pillars of the production system. In many companies, managers believe that respect is about greeting employees in the hallways and not shouting at them. Of course, this is important, but this concept includes much more: respect for people means giving everyone the opportunity to succeed in their work, realize their potential, and in most cases, discover hidden talents.

We started Lean-transformation at our company in 2017 by implementing several Lean-tools. One of them included the involvement of employees in improving the processes they perform on a daily basis. We tried to adopt the best experience of involving employees in improvements from another production company, by submitting their proposals on the Idea Forms.

There were two types of idea forms: a Problem Form to identify problems / defects and an Idea Form to describe the problem itself and provide a solution to solve it. We were faced with the fact that workers began to write many household tasks that did not relate to production processes, but which were painful and were conditionally precautionary in writing ideas for process improvement.

After solving the basic needs of employees, we expected them to write ideas to improve processes. And then they started to appear, but only in a small number of people. After close communication with employees, mostly tete-a-tete, we realized that they have a lack theoretical knowledge and practical skills on how to properly change processes, how to see, recognize and remove losses. Lean-transformation was carried out only by the management of the enterprise and this was a serious mistake.

Considering this had been held theoretical training on the basics of Kaizen, practical training cases, trips to other companies, in order to consolidate the examples of knowledge gained. After that, workers looked at their production processes differently and were ready for change. The Blank Ideas, in which employees wrote their improvements, also changed. We added to it a list of 8 types of losses and the employee chose what kind of loss they remove, implementing his idea. Thus, the workers began to do Kaizen consciously.

The large number of forms led to the fact that they were difficult and time-consuming to process, there was no quick feedback to employee, which led to a certain decline in involvement.

The way out of this situation was the development of the Progress Idea program, which allowed to submit, receive and process employees' ideas on-line. At the same time, we have introduced a cumulative bonus system, which provides for the accrual of a certain number of points for each submitted idea and a small improvement, which has proven itself. Both quantitative and qualitative indicators in the presentation of ideas by employees have increased.


Today, our system of attracting employees to change the production culture of the enterprise includes a range of motivational activities, both individual and collective, which contribute to the development of a friendly atmosphere and healthy competition within the team. If you are interested in the Progress Idea system, you can explore it using the link that you will be able to get after registering on our site and the request.

This program is easily installed on smartphones, thereby increasing the ease of use for employees, allows you to administer it on-line and be aware of all the positive changes in your company, organization, institution.

If you are interested in the Progress Idea system, you can explore it using the link that you will be able to get after registering on our site and the request. This program is easily installed on smartphones, thereby increasing the ease of use for employees, allows you to administer it on-line and be aware of all the positive changes in your company, organization, institution.