Kaizen Forever: Teachings of Chihiro Nakao captures the wisdom of one of the last living people trained directly by Taiichi Ohno. Nakao-san is a master kaizen sensei who co-founded Shingijutsu at Ohno's request and carried Toyota's production system to the world. The book is a transmission of how Nakao-san thinks, aimed at anyone who wants to learn to see their work - and its true costs - clearly, and improve it forever. This expanded second edition adds a biosketch of Nakao-san and 78 new teachings.
This book helps readers by:
Decoding The Real Meaning of "Shingijutsu." Unpacks the deeper meaning behind "new technology" and the Shingijutsu Production system, reframing kaizen as a never-ending pursuit of "always new" through hands-on correction of abnormalities in the genba.Revealing How Shingijutsu-Kaizen Actually Works. Chapter 2 explains Nakao-san's provocative "Nos," the things practitioners must not do in kaizen, and "Moonshine" creativity to break the reliance on money, new machines, and conventional answers to problems that block real improvement.Developing People, Not Just Processes. Gathers his teachings on people, showing how kaizen builds human capability and thinking rather than merely cutting cost or headcount.Teaching How to See Process. Sharpens the reader's eye for flow versus batch-and-queue ("stagnant") processing and the wastes hiding in everyday work.Rethinking Equipment, Space, And Money. Challenge assumptions about buying big machines, consuming floor space, and spending money, and instead showing how human creativity and kaizen beat spending money to solve problems.Mastering Time and Information. Expose how lead time and the flow of material-and-information determine cost, quality, safety, and competitiveness.Expanding The Lessons Further. Dozens of new insights that broaden and deepen Nakao-san's guidance for kaizen practitioners.Putting It into Practice. Presents Shingijutsu's kaizen process, turning wisdom into a high-impact, repeatable way of working every day, with closing comments and appendices on kaizen at home and memorable catchphrases.It is a book of profound wisdom, the result of over 50 years of kaizen practice on the genba. Kaizen Forever is immensely practical and designed to shatter the reader's preconceptions about work, cost, creativity, competition, etc. For curious, open-minded practitioners, it offers rare, direct-from-Toyota lineage, and an invitation to practice kaizen forever.