Four Principles Kaizen Awards to be announced in under a fortnight

Celebrating local endeavours in the field of lean transformation, the winners of the Four Principles Kaizen Awards will be announced in less a fortnight at a ceremony in Riyadh.

Put together by specialist lean management consultancy Four Principles, the Kaizen Awards recognise and reward companies in Saudi Arabia which have sought continuous improvement through the adoption of lean principles across their value streams, with the broader aim of driving overall awareness and implementation of lean management throughout the Kingdom and wider region.

Following the closing of entries in September, for which the firm received an ‘overwhelming’ number of submissions across two categories from industry leaders in Saudi Arabia, the winners of the Kaizen Awards will be announced at a ceremony in Riyadh on the 9th of December – with dozens of leading CXO executives from the country’s major private and public organisations expected to attend.

Organisations were invited to share their lean success stories in one of two categories, ‘Continuous Improvement Process’ and ‘Lean Transformation’, covering such details as the challenges faced by the company, the objective and goals of the initiative, the project duration, costs and number of employees involved, and ultimately the actions taken and eventual results in quality, lead times, overheads and sustainability.For the submissions, the Continuous Improvement category included any small scope project limited to one area of the business, showing analysis, solution design and implementation with demonstrable results, while the Lean Transformation bracket concerned a project containing smaller projects that impacted an entire organisation over a longer period of time – such as the transformation project that Saudi tourism operator Mawaddah is set to undertake with the firm.

In addition to the attendant prestige, the award winners in each category will also be granted a significant prize; in the case of the continuous improvement category, a one week analysis project by Four Principles in an area of operations as chosen by the company, and, for the winners of the lean transformation category; a five day trip for three senior executives to Japan, the birth-place of the Kaizen management philosophy.

Originating in the Japanese automotive industry, most notably at Toyota where Four Principles co-founder Seif Shieshakly spent time earlier in his career, the now cross-sector business management philosophy focuses on a customer-first approach, with the ‘lean’ achieved through eliminating waste rather than cutting costs which might negatively impact on the services or products offered, and the transformation driven by an organisation-wide dedication to small, continuous improvements.

For the winners of the Kaizen Awards’ lean transformation category, Four Principles will arrange an industry-tailored schedule of visits, meetings and activities for three company executives over five days in Japan to showcase how lean practices are implemented throughout pioneering local firms – an invaluable prize in line with the firm’s stated ambition of bringing the lean philosophy to a wider regional audience.