Kaizen, as practised at Toyota, is the classic here. Waste elimination should not only be a matter of chance that relies upon operator initiative, but is driven. There are a number of ways in which this is done:

• Response Analysis. At Toyota operators can signal, by switch or chord, when they encounter a problem. At some workstations, there are a range of switches covering quality, maintenance, and materials shortage. When an operator activates the switch, the overhead Andon Board lights up highlighting the workstation and type of problem. People literally come running in response. But the sting is in the tail: a clock also starts running which is only stopped when the problem is resolved. These recorded times accumulate in a computer system. They are not used to apportion blame, but for analysis. Thus at the end of an appropriate period, say a fortnight, a Pareto analysis is done which reveals the most pressing problems and workstations.
• Line Stop. A Toyota classic, closely related to response analysis, allows operators on the line to pull a chord if a problem is encountered. Again, the Andon Board lights up. Again, the stoppage is time recorded. But the motivation to solve the problem is intense because stopping the line stops the whole plant. This means application of the 5 Whys root cause technique. (See later section).
• Inventory withdrawal. Many will be familiar with the classic JIT "water and rocks" analogy, whereby dropping the water level (inventory) exposes the rocks (problems). This is done with a vengeance at Toyota. Whenever there is stability, deliberate experimentation takes place by withdrawing inventory to see what will happen. Less well known is that this is a "win win" strategy: either nothing happens in which case the system runs tighter, or a "rock" is encountered which according to Toyota philosophy is a good thing. It is not any rock, but the most urgent rock. Deliberate destabilisation creates what Robert Hall has referred to as a "production laboratory".
• Waste Checklists. Toyota makes extensive use of waste checklists in production and non-production areas alike. A waste checklist is a set of questions, distributed to all employees in a particular area, asking them simple questions: "Do you bend to pick up a tool", "Do you walk more than 2 yards to fetch material", and so on. Where there is a positive response, there is waste. The result is that individuals and teams never run out of ideas for areas requiring improvement.
• The "Stage 1, Stage 2" cycle. At Toyota there is a culture that drives improvement. This culture or belief stems from the widely held attitude that each completed improvement project necessarily opens up opportunity for yet another improvement activity. For want of a better phrase, the Bicheno has termed this "stage 1, stage 2" [See Cause and Effect JIT} after a list of JIT "stage 1" activities that lead to "stage 2" opportunities which in turn lead to stage 1 opportunities, and so on. The list of possible chains is very large, but an example will suffice. Thus setup reduction (stage 1) may lead to reduced buffers (stage 2), which may lead to improved layout (stage 1), leading to Improved visibility (stage 2), leading to improved quality (stage 1), leading to improved scheduling (stage 2), and so on and on.