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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

hi, professional diesel engine tech here. if I can clarify: kaizen boxes are exclusively for critical process control like foreign object ingress control and things like reactor maintenance, high speed rail, and aerospace. they are audited, insane, and not generally used outside certain critical kaizen processes. failing a kbox check too often can get you fired.

if you find comfort at any level with kboxes --and you have a medical condition that could exacerbate affinity toward it-- I'm not sure its healthy. NASCAR doesn't use them, most production Indy teams don't either. they are a critical process control and not "normal."

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> kaizen boxes are exclusively for critical process control [...]

Hi, Professional Supply Chain Consultant here, who also coaches and trains Six Sigma!

This absolutely isn't true in reality, and these are used quite frequently across logistics and manufacturing to maintain '5 S'. There is absolutely no reason they can't be deployed for non-critical tasks, and often are used to help productivity and ensure that items get put back to the right place each time.

Having previously worked on Naval Reactors:

I did not once see a Kaizen box there. If we accidentally left tools in the reactor compartment and they got hot they got tossed into the box in there and that was that.

That said, I do enjoy a properly sorted box and prefer them. That may simply be a decade plus of being used to using them though; they are second nature to me.

Yiiikes, how often were tools left where they shouldn't have been left around reactors? It seems like a process failure--if you can leave something extra then how can you trust you aren't forgetting something essential, like tightening a fitting, etc.

Foreign material exclusion and quality assurance have different procedures. Sounds like it wasn’t a big deal, so the tools definitely weren’t left in an FME zone.

Totally separate QA between process and tools in that world. It was a heck of an interesting adjustment when I moved to aviation. Far less QA on process and far more on tools/FOD.

What an unnecessarily negative response. Maybe some people have tools in a vehicle toolbox that benefit from this type of system to minimize movement. Maybe people just like to keep things organized.

I used it when building assembly cells where it provided an easy way to prevent clutter and force standardization.

A quick visual check could confirm the state of the cell and there was no doubt where things went. I can't imagine a production environment without it, or something like it.

We never bought foam and would take closed cell foam from the garbage, cut through holes, and fit them in trays painted black for contrast. Quick, easy, and cheap.

My last job invoked using kaizen to reform marketing strategy and IT tooling (aka making me revisit the 10 year old Access databases to create more user friendly interfaces for Marketing, and forcing Excel to generate template documents via SharePoint 2010 data that nobody wanted to contribute to). It didn't work, because once the initial excitement wore off nobody cared except me. Not that this applies to what you said, but it is what it is.

I assume they are used more in manufacturing and factories? That's the environment kaizen was born in, to optimise production lines.

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