A few years ago, I read a fascinating article in the New York Times titled “In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity“.

The article goes on to describe how Toyota, rather than making a financial donation to the New York Food Bank, decided to offer the expertise of its engineers.

For the uninitiated, the “Toyota Production System” (TPS) is a well-known socio-technical system that paved the way for the whole manufacturing industry. Take a look at The 12 Best Van Leasing Accounts to Follow on Twitter and learn more.

Among many philosophies and techniques that we now consider for granted, the TPS brought us the Kanban (Think “Trello”), Kaizen, and Genchi Genbutsu.

According to the New York Times’ article using a pay stub creator, Toyota’s donation was much more significant than a lump sum of money, and in many ways:

• At a soup kitchen in Harlem, Toyota’s engineers cut down the wait time for dinner to 18 minutes from as long as 90.

• At a food pantry on Staten Island, they reduced the time people spent filling their bags to 6 minutes from 11.

• And at a warehouse in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where volunteers were packing boxes of supplies for victims of Hurricane Sandy, a dose of kaizen cut the time it took to pack one box to 11 seconds from 3 minutes.

For Toyota’s engineers, optimizing the flow and quality of these operations is achieved by searching for ways to streamline and enhance performance. Put more simply, it is about thinking outside the box and making small changes to generate big results.

As an operations specialist, I am a firm believer in this methodology. One of my main drivers is to help others become more efficient by building administrative tools or by highlighting shortcuts in a workflow.

What I didn’t know was that this philosophy has a name: Kaizen.

Kaizen – Definition

According to Wikipedia, Kaizen is Japanese for “improvement”. In business, kaizen refers to activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life-coaching, government, banking, fantasy hockey, and other industries.

Toyota became famous for its practice of Kaizen, which gave birth to the “Toyota way“, a set of principles that dictate how many assembly chain lines run today.

Main Concepts

Although creating video content may seem quite different from making cars, so is running a soup kitchen. For now, let’s focus on the principles of continuous improvement:

• Challenge – forming a long-term vision, meeting challenges with courage and creativity

• Kaizen – improving business operations continuously, always driving for innovation

• Genchi Genbutsu – Going to the source to find the facts to make correct decisions

These three tenets are as vital in our industry as they are for all others:

• Without Challenge, production companies are bound to create content that gets lost within the extraordinary volume produced daily.

• Without Kaizen, production companies are bound to lose their lead on competitors.

• And without Genchi Genbutsu, production companies are bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

As you can see, Kaizen is very relevant to our industry. You may have been practicing it without knowing it, as I did for a long time. Together, I’d like to explore how we can take these concepts and apply them to video production operations.

Kaizen in Practice

Imagine building a car. Traditionally, only one vehicle would be assembled at a time. First, the engine would go in the frame, then the hood, the wheels, lights, etc…

When the assembly line was created during the industrial revolution, the process was refined to allow multiple teams to work at the same time, drastically improving efficiency.

From there, improvements were made throughout time, such as creating alert systems or refining the reordering process for parts. At each step of this process, the goal is to eliminate waste and maximize value. In other words, it’s all about creating the best possible economy.

In media production, our assembly line is worked by Sales People, Creatives, Line Producers, Coordinators, Technicians, and Marketers. Whenever our “car” project moves through the line, it is of the utmost importance that we handle it as efficiently as possible.

The philosophy of Kaizen supposed that we halt production whenever a problem occurs in order to solve it once and for all. And sometimes, the hardest part of this operation is to recognize the underlying problems in the chain. Ultimately, for every step that isn’t perfect, a solution needs to be formulated before moving on to the next step.

Steps towards a better production process

For a new media company outputting content daily, shutting down production to solve every issue doesn’t seem likely. However, our industry has an advantage over the car manufacturing world: our assembly line is mostly digital, allowing us to sidestep at will on a project basis.

Taking the time to solve a complex issue while other productions are running can be challenging. But the more streamlined our operations get, the easier this task becomes. No matter how difficult or time-consuming a solution is to craft, it is always worth it as it is bound to be re-used. Remember, the main parts of our assembly line aren’t likely to change. Not until someone develops a new way to create content.

Kaizen may sometimes seem like a never-ending task. And it is. The light at the end of the tunnel does not exist. Even if a workflow is improved time and time over, there will always be opportunities to work better, faster, and cheaper.

Motivation

The reason to practice Kaizen shouldn’t be for the glory of the work itself. Another key principle of the Toyota Production System is respect. Respect for others, through understanding and mutual trust.

When we talk about improving productivity, the goal shouldn’t necessarily be to always output more content. It can also be to output the same content within less time and under less stress. I’ve often heard that the life expectancy of Assistant Directors is between 50 and 60 years old, mostly due to stress. And I have personally witnessed two production offices with very similar business models and scale run eight hour days on one end, and 12 on the other, due to stark differences in operational philosophy.

Productivity is an interesting concept, especially when applied to creative spaces. Our goal should always be to save time where it doesn’t add any value and reinvest it where it will make our product better. The “Good / Fast / Cheap” matrix (also known as Project Management Triangle) we all know isn’t as accurate as we’d like to think when applied to our field. After all, regardless of financial investment, more time always means better quality when it comes to video production.

While on this subject, it is important to talk about our production office’s ability to change gears from one type of product to another. In the car manufacturing industry, consumer demand dictates how many sedans, SUVs, and luxury vehicles are produced each day. The Assembly line morphs into the right shape to accommodate this demand.

Similarly, setting up processes to produce cheap content quickly is different from processes designed to produce quality content at a slower pace. However, the team handling both products remains the same and will even do both simultaneously. Creating the right workflow should take into account both possibilities as well as the mechanism that allows switching between them.

Tools for Kaizen

So how do you start practicing the art of continuous improvement? The answer is in many ways, as simple as the philosophy itself.

Always remember that recognizing the problem is the most difficult step in this process. I like using a couple of methods to help with this:

• The five whys: ask yourself “why” five times in a row or until you have reached the root of the problem.
• Use an Ishikawa diagram (also called “fishbone” or cause-and-effect diagram) to map the potential reasons behind an issue.

As with any administrative field, video production can benefit greatly from paying attention to repetitive tasks:

• Do people have to type the same information multiple times?
• Is information flowing from one set of hands to the next seamlessly?

Sort the need for new or improved processes by order of importance. Then, form teams to address each topic thoroughly. You may even want to start by designing the process that dictates how to identify problems and bring them to attention.

When it comes to your long-term vision, the sky is the limit. Regardless of the goal, try identifying the steps to get there:

• What data will you need?
• Who are the key deciders to enable this plan?

Although we work in a creative industry, our role as production operations specialists is to bring technological innovation and process-based reasoning to the table. In addition, we should challenge ourselves by proactively setting long-term goals that support the needs of our team.

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