Kaizen

is a Japanese concept in business studies which asserts that significant positive results may be achieved due the cumulative effect of many, often small (and even trivial), improvements to all aspects of a company's operations. Kaizen is put into action by continuously improving every facet of a company's production and requires the participation of all employees from the CEO to assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. Kaizen aims to eliminate waste and redundancies. Kaizen may also be referred to as zero investment improvement (ZII) due to its utilization of existing resources.

Kaizen was first practiced in Japanese businesses after World War II, and most notably as part of The Toyota Way. It has since spread throughout the world and has been applied to environments outside of business and productivity. Provided by Wikipedia