Every factory knows how fast it must produce. Only a few know how fast it must create profit. Takt Profit closes that gap: the profit every minute must produce, at the capacity bottleneck and the profit bottleneck. The profit of every strategic improvement is planned and reported in the KAIZENshiro budget, as binding as the production and sales plans.
Profit is no longer reviewed at month-end. It is managed every minute.
ROI is no longer hoped for. It is designed.
Keep the drum. Keep the pull. Add the second clock.
You synchronise your factory with the customer.
Who makes your factory synchronous and profitable?
Every company plans the profit it sells. Few plan the profit they make.
◆ 7 Strategic Kaizen projects cross the functions and deliver the annual KAIZENshiro budget and the Speed-Based Target Profit.
The problem, redefinedYour improvement system has tools, people and energy, and no destination.
Continuous improvement is not a strategy. It becomes one when profit sets the direction.
The basic image of Strategic Kaizen, drawn in one movement: the definition, and its origin in 2017. Then the sculptor who first knows exactly what he wants to make, and only then picks up the tools.
A method is not a toolbox. It is an order of decisions.
Three stages and seven processes, in a fixed order: the target first, the tool last. Then the five problems the method is built to solve.
Without the internal profit, the year would have ended $5.2 million short.
A $37 million target profit, $5 million of it from inside the factory, written into the budget before the year began. The result: $5.2 million.
Dialogue reconstructed from the book’s account · roles, not real people.
The problem, redefinedYour factory receives a speed signal from the customer and no profit signal from the company.
Takt time tells the factory how fast to run. Nothing tells it how much profit that speed must produce.
A line ticking perfectly at takt. Beside it, an empty gauge. Takt time is the pace of customer demand. Takt Profit is the pace of profit demand.
Profit is not what is left over. Profit is designed.
The calculation on screen. Speed-Based Target Profit rises from $20.99 to $28.14 a minute at the bottleneck, while the price falls from $1,150 to $1,000.
A line that meets takt can still miss the year.
A real project, heard in the boardroom and on the line. Cycle time from 33 to 27 seconds, $2.4 million of the year’s KAIZENshiro, ten weeks, no investment.
Dialogue reconstructed from the book’s account · roles, not real people.
The problem, redefinedYou have a second bottleneck and nobody is looking for it.
The module nobody attacked was losing 2.4 times more, every month. Beyond Strategic Kaizen, Figure 4.7, p. 151.
31 → 23 s and $875,000 in four weeks. MCPD: Profitability Scenarios, pp. 192–197 and 256–261.
A set-up project with its profit specified before the start. An example from the book.
The whole argument of the first week, in one sitting.
From the problem to the method’s three stages, the profit bottleneck, the annual mechanism and the results that reach the P&L. Select a week to see the problem it takes on.
Every plant has a second factory inside it. It produces only losses and waste, and it never misses a shift.
Every third film of the week is one real project from the books, lived from both sides of the table. You are in the room when the profit is written into the budget, and on the floor when it is earned.
Most improvement projects hope to create profit. This project starts with the profit already specified.
Process purity. The ideal state of manufacturing costs, free from losses and waste (CLW), and fully aligned with value creation.
Structural resilience. A fortified framework that defends against CLW and sustains long-term value.
Shiro defines the theoretical margin for improvement: the space between current cost realities and the ideal cost structure. It is the foundation for identifying KAIZENshiro, the improvable value, and for designing Strategic Kaizen projects that turn chronic inefficiencies into acute, solvable challenges, without relying on disruptive investment.
Week 3 · Film 9 · 7 min 18 sOne year in one plantWithout the internal profit, the year would have ended $5.2 million short.
Week 2 · Film 6 · 8 min 30 sAn assembly line synchronised to taktA line that meets takt can still miss the year.
Week 1 · Film 3 · 2 min 47 sMore set-ups, not fewer. Profitable flexibility.A set-up project with its profit specified before the start. An example from the book.You do not control the price. You control your losses and waste.
A past president of the World Confederation of Productivity Science, a former vice president of Japan’s oldest management consultancy, and Norman Bodek, known to the Lean world as its godfather.
“As he does in all his books, Alin provides examples of organizations that are striving to follow his ideas, to place KAIZEN at the heart of their strategic planning, and to target, and achieve, increased profits. … By reading and applying the Strategic KAIZEN thinking from this book, you have the opportunity to realize the rewards of the most comprehensive and complete approach to KAIZEN adoption yet seen.”
As he does in all his books, Alin provides examples of organizations that are striving to follow his ideas, to place KAIZEN at the heart of their strategic planning, and to target, and achieve, increased profits.
Those with experience with KAIZEN and similar productivity improvement approaches will recognize many of the issues raised, the tools and techniques referenced, and the overall guiding methodology but may be surprised by the sheer level of detail that Alin includes and the way that the various components of the approach are stitched together into a seamless whole that, as the book title suggests, goes beyond earlier approaches that attempted to make KAIZEN a feature of manufacturing strategy.
This is not a book that promotes a simple panacea. Alin is not claiming he has found a ‘silver bullet’. The approach takes hard work, detailed analysis, consistent and comprehensive application of a range of tools and techniques and deep immersion in the concepts and practices of KAIZEN. It is these factors that have enabled Alin to have constructed his unique approach. This approach also stresses the need to maintain the application of the methodology over the long term to achieve continuous and constant improvement. The inclusion of the example companies is very useful in helping understand the key messages of Strategic KAIZEN thinking for performing synchronous profitable operations.
By reading and applying the Strategic KAIZEN thinking from this book, you have the opportunity to realize the rewards of the most comprehensive and complete approach to KAIZEN adoption yet seen.
“Alin succeeded in a beautiful new book — this time a new theory and a new practice in operations management. … I am convinced that SBTP will have a major impact on the science of management.”
Alin succeeded in a beautiful new book — this time a new theory and a new practice in operations management. The SBTP is a new paradigm for profitable production planning which integrates productivity measurement and improvement directly within the planning and scheduling of production activities. Without a good production planning system, in fact a maximum degree of use of current and future capacities, the results of improvements in working methods and performance may disappear, so SBTP is necessary for productivity management to achieve target profitability.
Therefore, both managers and practitioners and academia will have a real enlightenment by identifying a new valuable way to achieve the target profit by increasing productivity for those concerned with operations management. I am convinced that SBTP will have a major impact on the science of management and will certainly open a new implementation topic in manufacturing companies and beyond in these days and in the future.
“I am pleased that Productivity Press, the company I started in 1980 is publishing Alin’s new book. You will find this book innovative, interesting and very challenging.”
I am pleased that Productivity Press, the company I started in 1980 is publishing Alin’s new book. You will find this book innovative, interesting and very challenging. The book is scholarly, and will require study by serious practitioners of Lean thinking but it will be worth the effort. I recommend that the book be read in study groups with the readers asking each other questions to bring out the information to be practically used in your organization.
Takt time keeps your promise to the customer. Takt Profit keeps your promise to the company.
