Digital Kaizen is a sequenced programme for mid-market manufacturers: disciplined shop-floor improvement as the foundation, digital tools and AI as the multipliers on top. Deployed by senseis, audited against a 100-day plan, measured in EBITDA.
A short, plain-language explainer. Watch it first, then decide whether to read on.
Most mid-market manufacturers operate at 50–65% OEE, carry excess working capital, lack real-time cost visibility, and under-extract incentives. Dashboards get installed. Sensors get wired. AI gets licensed. And nothing moves.
The missing layer is process knowledge — the tacit know-how that converts digital tools into productive action. Without it, digital does not stick.
Digital Kaizen is the coupling. Kaizen routines — PDCA, standard work, Gemba — are the vehicle through which process knowledge accumulates. Digital tools are the multiplier. Deployed together, in sequence, they compound.
Each intervention is deployed only once the foundation beneath it is functioning. Instrumentation before analytics. Analytics before AI.
Manually-measured OEE baseline. Tiered stand-ups from line team to executive. Visible, physical, self-sustaining within 60 days.
Twelve to twenty Kaizen events in year one, led by senseis with explicit capability transfer. A3, 5-Why, DMAIC matched to problem size.
Vendor-agnostic sensors and gateways feeding a standard reference architecture. Full instrumentation in 3–6 months.
Three time horizons, three audiences. Every dashboard owns a decision. Charts without action attached are deleted.
Predictive maintenance, machine vision, demand forecasting, yield optimisation, energy. Deployed selectively — never for its own sake.
Cobots, AGVs, vision-guided and process-specific. Applied where Kaizen cannot move the ceiling — not to automate existing waste.
An integrated digital backbone in which a customer order flows from CRM through ERP planning, MES execution, instrumented production and dispatch — every step visible, every step measurable. The platform on which AI decision-making actually sits.
Process knowledge is the coupling.— Digital Kaizen, first principles
Without it, digital does not stick.
We engage with owners, boards and operations teams where leadership is committed to a multi-year programme.
Pre-sale value creation, post-acquisition integration, family businesses preparing the next generation.
COOs, plant managers and operations directors who want the tools, standard work and capability to sustain gains.
Private-equity investors deploying Digital Kaizen into portfolio companies as a repeatable value-creation programme.