Kaizen Teams: Integrated HRD Practices for Successful Team Building

Lean thinking has evolved as an operational strategy over the past few decades and is integral to the fabric of many leading organizations. Within lean organizations, the pursuit of identifying and eliminating non-value-added activities and processes from the value stream is achieved through self-directed teams commonly called kaizen teams. This conceptual article introduces lean thinking, including a brief overview of lean origins, guiding principles for kaizen events and associated teams, and their location within team-building research and literature. Four just-in-time team-building learning modules for kaizen events are presented with appropriate resources for additional research of relevant theories.