ASSESSMENT ON PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES OF KAIZEN IMPLEMENTATION IN SELECTED MANUFACTURING COMPANIES OF ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

In Ethiopia, manufacturing sector is at its infancy. In comparison with the agriculture and service sectors, the manufacturing sector has a limited share in terms of production, employment, and exports. To overcome such challenges on 28th October, 2010 Ethiopian Kaizen institute was legally established and some companies started implementation of Kaizen. The researcher selected three Manufacturing Companies of Addis Ababa namely Excel Plastic Plc, DH Geda Blanket Factory Plc and Finfine Furniture Factory Plc. By taking in to consideration the main objective of the study, the questionnaire was designed and distributed to 240 employees of the companies in proportion 46 questionnaires to Excel Plastic Plc, 74 questionnaires to DH Geda Blanket Factory Plc and 120 questionnaires to Finfine Furniture Factory Plc. From the distributed questionnaires 215 were collected. The result showed that Kaizen tools, Kaizen philosophies, Kaizen principles, and Kaizen three pillars are applied on the companies at moderate and below level of implementation and differed among each other. Further, the selected manufacturing companies have harvested monetary and non monetary benefits by implementation of Kaizen. The research finding also discovered that all the three companies failed to implement suggestion system and all the three companies especially Excel Plastic Plc and DH Geda Blanket Factory Plc faced various challenges on kaizen implementation.