A study on construction of a kaizen case-base and its utilisation: A case of visual management in fabrication and assembly shop-floors

In this paper, focusing on visual management (VM) as one of the kaizen technologies, a procedure for its new case development is discussed. This procedure consists of two portions. The first portion is construction of kaizen case-base, namely: (1) correction and analysis of kaizen cases; (2) establishment of drivers and instances of investigated kaizen case; and (3) analysis of proximity relationship among kaizen cases. The second portion is utilisation of kaizen case-base, namely: (4) selection of kaizen case from kaizen case-base; (5) consideration of the other related kaizen cases; and (6) new kaizen case design. A case study is performed to assure the relevance of the proposed procedure by focusing on 'dispatching board', a typical VM technology. Through collaboration with a factory eager to implement VM, the proposed procedure is qualified by experts as a useful method for kaizen knowledge transfer.