You're referring to one part of TQM -- Kaizen (改善) can be loosely translated as 'improvement'. The second character (善) is Zen (quite literally), and means 'goodness' or 'virtue', and the first character means 'to change' and 'to examine'. So, the long translation is that 改善 is the process of improvement through introspection.
Kind of ironic that TQM was invented in the States, but really didn't take off until it hit Japan; I think part of this has to do with an engineering culture rooted on a very earthquake-prone island.
In case anybody is interested, the other parts of TQM (in Japanese) are:
当たり前品質 (atarimae hinshitsu): Obvious quality. The first moment that a customer sees or touches your product, they should feel like it's a quality good.
完成 (kansei): Completion, perfection. A product should be well-thought out to address the customer's needs.
魅力的品質 (miryokuteki hinshitsu): Products should have aesthetic quality as well; for example, a kitchen knife should cut food smoothly and effortlessly, not just hack it into pieces.
Nice summary. I've often thought about the Japanese interest in "continual improvement" as a reason for their success in industries such as car and electronics manufacturing. The less structured American approach doesn't do so well there, but does a great job in fast changing fields like software and biotech.
>The second character (善) is Zen (quite literally)
Just a quick word of warning- 善 is pronounced "zen" or "shàn" in Chinese, but it's not the zen you hear about.
Zen, as in Zen (or chán) Buddhism, meditation or any other "zen" in common English usage is 禪 (simplified as 禅 after WWII).
Deming's bio is really interesting. To me it seems that Japan is already something like light years ahead of the US because it embraced this most logical long-term methodology for societies that rely upon production's means of consumption.
I totally forgot about 禅! I usually associate 善 with those sorts of emotions, because of words like 積善 (the accumulation of good deeds) and 善導 (guidance in the direction of virtue). Goes to show where any of my religious feelings might lie. grin
Kaizen was one of my areas of research for grad studies in Management Accounting. All of the case studies I looked at (which were usually implemented by Asian companies after the US dismissed the guy who came up with the concept of Kaizen, which led to its perceived roots as a Japanese business philosophy) focused on one thing only, and that was precisely elimination of the amount of disposables produced in any production environment: specifically manufacturing environments.
Essentially, Kaizen is summed up to be "continuous improvement" . . . regarding units of quality produced but there's another metric to be considered, and that is the amount of "scrap" or waste produced in creating X level of quality. Of course, along this route, the statistical metrics can be taken a bit too far.
There is a fine line between rigidity in standards for perceived quality and room for innovation; sometimes the line is too fine.
