Masaaki Imai

Masaaki Imai (born, 1930) is a Japanese organizational theorist and management consultant, known for his work on quality management, specifically on Kaizen.

Born in Tokyo, Imai obtained his BA from Tokyo University in 1955, where he continued to do graduate work in international relations.

Late-1950s Imai worked for five years in Washington DC at the Japanese Productivity Center, where he was responsible to accompany groups of Japanese businessmen on visits to American plants. In 1962 in Tokyo he founded the his own Employment agency for the recruitment of management, executive and research personnel.

In 1986 he founded the Kaizen Institute Consulting Group (KICG) to help western companies to introduce the concepts, systems and tools of Kaizen. In the same year he published, in Japan, the book on business management "Kaizen: Japanese spirit of improvement", which helped popularizing the Kaizen concept in the West.

Kaizen, Japanese for "improvement" or "change for the best", refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, and business management. It has been applied in healthcare,psychotherapy,life-coaching, government, banking, and other industries. Imai (1986) acknowledged, that Kaizen starts with detection of needs and problem definition:

Ishikawa (1985) and Imai (1986) both defined the Seven Basic Tools of Quality. Looking back on the impact of Kaizen, Imai (1997) stated:

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