Kenya and Kaizen:
A Remarkable Encounter (Part 1)
by Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD
I'd like to tell you about my trip to sub-Saharan Africa. My first time. I had been invited to deliver a keynote
at the 11th annual Kaizen conference, sponsored by The Kaizen Institute and KAM (Kenyan Association Manufacturing) in Nairobi, Kenya. That morphed on the second day into a seminar on Visual Thinking. This was not my usual keynote or seminar. Not for me. It was special because I had the great pleasure of meeting over 100 very savvy practitioners of continuous improvement, lean, and workplace visuality, with gurus Vinod Grover and Jayanth Murthy taking the lead.
Over the course of the first day, I got to listen to many case studies from African companies that had been on the improvement journey, some for as long as a decade. Here's a sample of what I learned.
Kariki Farms. Meeting the flower demands of Europe is the challenge the 1200 employees at Kariki Farms face every day. Correction: not employees but value-adders. "Innovation is easy," we learned, "maintaining standards is difficult." Eunice Mbuga, Group HR Manager, was joined on the podium by co-founder/ CEO, Richard Fernandes, and Josphine Karega. "You have to really believe in your value-adders. You have to trust them, recognize them, and, most of all, appreciate them." We all agree!
Coninx. MD Nihal Shah revealed two of Coninx's keys to creating a culture of entrepreneurs. The first: gamify work--set daily, weekly, and quarterly wins...
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