Kaikaku or "instant revolution" is one of the most exciting concepts to emerge in recent years. Unlike many "fads" kaikaku delivers the results in a very short space of time. Literally within one week a company could be benefiting from a leap in productivity in one area of your plant or office.

Kaikaku is about "going for it", about doing not planning, about a preference for doing it now and reasonably rather than later (but perhaps never) even though it may be done better, about learning by doing, by trial and error. It is also about involvement on the shop floor by shop floor people. It is about real empowerment to just do it without asking for permission to make every little change. Flow, especially one-piece flow, is often the aim and the event.

Kaikaku aims at spectacular and very rapid productivity improvement in a focused area. As Imai has pointed out, it is often easier to achieve a 20% improvement than a 5% improvement! Kaikaku exercises have gained the serious attention of managers in the last few years, if for no other reason than the scale of the gains achieved. Today, Kaikaku, or "Kaizen Blitz" (the name used by the US Association for Manufacturing Excellence) has been proven in both service and manufacturing companies, where management has been brave enough to take the challenge. Not surprisingly the concept has its origins in the Toyota Production System, and is based on Taiichi Ohno's Seven Wastes or "Muda", on "5S", and on the "5 Whys" questioning culture. It is a no-holds-barred, go-for-it approach and the exact opposite of "paralysis-by-analysis".

Kaikaku is often used to target the "low hanging fruit" in a company, but may also be used as part of a programme of ongoing improvement.

Although the concept has been around for at least 15 years, kaikaku has had a surprisingly modest number of customers, at least until recently. Probably three things have now got if off the ground: the work of the Kaizen Institute (through their founder Imai) who adopts kaikaku in typically week-long workshops but calls it kaizen, the work of Association for Manufacturing Excellence in the US which championed what they refer to as "kaizen blitz", and the publication of Womack and Jones' book "Lean Thinking" which described kaikaku in action at several companies, including the classic Porsche story where the kaikaku experts began by asking "where is the factory?" Because "this is obviously the warehouse", and proceeded to get the once-staid and be-suited "Doctor Engineers" to walk around the plant with a power saw cutting off all racking above waist height so as to improve visibility. That story gives the flavour of a kaikaku event.

Kaikaku should be seen as alternating with continuous improvement activities. Professor Dan Jones argues that kaikaku is not a one-off event but that subsequent kaikaku will continue to yield dramatic breakthrough results. This sequence of alternating between kaikaku and continuous improvement is not unique to JIT nor is it new.

There are several variations to kaikaku events. For instance, one version uses engineers and managers (including from the outside) to work with the shop floor staff. Another version leaves it pretty well to the operators themselves, working under a facilitator.