Masaaki Imai
Masaaki Imai is a Japanese management consultant, known for his work on quality management, specifically on Kaizen.
In the late 1950’s, Imai worked for five years in Washington DC at the Japanese Productivity Center, where he was responsible to accompany groups of Japanese businessmen on visits to American plants.
In 1986, he founded the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group (KICG) to help western companies to introduce the concepts, systems and tools of Kaizen.
His first book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success, helped popularize the Kaizen concept in the West.
Influences
- Taiichi Ohno
- Kauro Ishikawa
- Hitoshi Takeda
- Kenji Takahashi
- Yukio Kakiuchi
- Ichiro Majima
- Kenichi Nakaya
- Zenjiro Sawada
- Kohei Goshi
- Yoshiki Iwata
- Japan Productivity Center
- Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers
- Japanese Productivity Center
- Japan Management Association
Influenced
- Kaizen Institute
Links
Books
- Strategic Kaizen
- Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense Approach to a Continuous Improvement Strategy
- Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success
Videos
Additional Resources
- A Brief History of Kaizen: The Key Players– creativesafetysupply.com
- Gemba Kaizen– lean-news.com
- What is Lean manufacturing?– iecieeechallenge.org
- Jishuken 101– kaizen-news.com
- Deming’s Contribution to Japan and Continual Improvement– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- Gemba Reveals Waste– 5snews.com
- The History of Kanban– creativesafetypublishing.com
- 5 Kaizen Tools to Start Using– hiplogic.com