The impact of managerial commitment and Kaizen benefits on companies

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of both managerial commitment and the professional development of human resources on the benefits obtained from Kaizen implementation at the planning stage in Mexican maquiladora companies.

As part of the methodology, a questionnaire is validated and administered to 423 workers in different companies from the states of Tabasco, Baja California, Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Moreover, a structural equation model is proposed to relate four latent variables: two concerning managerial commitment and the professional development of human resources, and two more related to the kinds of benefits obtained (economic and for human resources).

Results demonstrate that managerial commitment has a direct and positive impact on economic benefits and those for human resources. The major contribution of this study is, however, the determination of dependency measures between these variables.

This research contributes to the improvement and change, since the results of the research can be extended to the sustainability of other improvement activities, presenting additional areas for future research, such understanding will increase the likelihood that the results of application of Kaizen are sustained, eliminating waste and improving support within the organization. Finally, this research makes contributions to the field of industrial engineering and management disciplines of engineering and operations management, as it focusses on the improvement of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy, these systems they are integral to the modeling of this investigation.

This study tests the hypotheses and their relation to the sustainability of Kaizen in time for them to use the analysis technique of structural equations. For the author, this is the first study to determine the causal relationships between the critical success factors and benefits of Kaizen, determining a measure of dependence between them.