Introduction

Leyland Trucks is part of a US company called Paccar Inc. It manufactures trucks under the DAF brand at Leyland, near Preston, as well as in Holland and Belgium. Leyland's current objective is to gain a 20% market share. It has developed a strategy to help it reach this target. Sometimes a business is able to improve by taking a giant leap forward. Leyland Trucks continually makes improvements and works towards its objectives by continuous improvement in small steps. This system is called 'Kaizen'.

Kaizen

A Kaizen action is one designed to bring about improvement. Often this involves teams meeting to see where improvements can be made. Lots of these small steps can lead to big improvements. A good example is Leyland's introduction of robots to its production process. Before going ahead, it made sure that it had the views of everyone who had been involved in a previous change and learned from this. Continuous improvement is essential for Leyland to meet its targets, keep customers happy and stay competitive. Added efficiency also keeps costs down and helps to protect jobs.

Setting goals

Leyland sets itself goals for targets that can be measured. These are called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Leyland clusters its KPIs under themes. These are:

• on-time performance

• productivity

• quality, using a measurable Quality Index target

• financial measures

• stock control

• health and safety

• continuous improvement (Kaizen).

Information from these KPIs is charted so that managers can see how close they are to targets and to set new targets. Continuous improvement is measured through a sophisticated statistical tool called Six Sigma.

Culture

Leyland Trucks has developed a culture of continuous improvement. It involves everyone in the process and trusts everyone to contribute where they can. Its values are based on team building, training, involvement of everyone in decision making, giving everyone appropriate responsibility and power and encouraging everyone to try out new ideas. People are encouraged to 'live the values' every day by sharing ideas, working in teams and celebrating success.

Kaizen in action

The success of Kaizen can be seen through a recent example. In May 2006, a Kaizen event was held in the vehicle finishing part of the plant. A team of project leaders worked with everyone else involved to identify problems and suggest solutions. This resulted in more than 200 ideas for improvement that led to greater efficiency in a number of areas.

Conclusion

For Leyland Trucks, Kaizen has been a key part of its continuing success. It has helped to achieve results across all of its KPIs. In 2006 alone, there were multi-million pound savings from Six Sigma, improvements in on-time delivery and reductions in both mechanical defects and injuries.