There are businesses where policies are decided by management and implemented by employees. And others in which corporate well-being, business improvement, best practices, and solutions to problems – real or potential – of the company, are a project shared and cared for by everyone. At AromataGroup we have chosen the second path, and we have done so by applying a philosophy that is much loved in Lean Production circles: Kaizen philosophy.
We often hear people talk about Kaizen as “change for the better”, but it is more than that: Kaizen means activating a change in the corporate culture itself and in the mind of each staff member, so that improvement becomes a shared act, an exercise in listening and sharing, a responsibility of all, and is born in “protected” circles where there are no hierarchies, but only the common desire to find effective solutions to potential risks or real problems of the company.
Our Chief Operating Officer, Valentino Bello, describes the process as follows: “We are only at the beginning of our Kaizen-inspired journey, but we are already starting to see the first results. We have started to organise small Kaizen circles in moments of free time, usually the lunch break. There are no hierarchies, no rules to follow: the goal is only the good of the workers and the company. They are not river meetings: the idea is that often, less is more”.
Kaizen circles are therefore short and quick: usually two or three meetings of an hour at the most are enough to find the simplest solution to small problems that the workers know about, with five days to put it into practice. “We may call ourselves micro-ambitious in the issues we deal with,” continues Bello, “but it is clear the approach works.”
Thanks to the Kaizen circles, in fact, AromataGroup has managed to reduce the amount of expired raw materials in its warehouses by 50%, and it has been possible to improve the safety of certain operations at a fraction of the budgeted cost thanks to a few simple ideas that have eliminated the root causes of the risk in the first place: all thanks to the sharing of the operators’ points of view and direct knowledge during the meetings. Because in Kaizen circles there are no roles or hierarchies: everyone has the same right to speak, the same language is shared, the same freedom to propose and create, and above all the same desire to improve and become better.
Dario Biraghi, one of the food technologists in the Application department at AromataGroup, coordinates the activities of the circles and describes them as “an excellent opportunity for each person in the company to express their thoughts on activities that they believe should be improved, or on critical issues that have been identified and need to be addressed”. Each employee thus becomes part of a company process aimed at continuous improvement, both at work and socially and culturally.
In Kaizen circles, respect prevails: we learn from everything and everyone, without criticising or blaming, even when ideas or proposals are discarded. Improvement is a shared effort. And the approach is not result-driven: the focus is on solving the problem: this avoids pressure and stress linked to the obligation to achieve results at all costs. Because after all, a shared company is a company that truly has an extra resource in its staff.
