Japanese Quality & Productivity Improvement Goes Operational

By Christopher JATOR, Cameroon Tribune
Minister Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa launched the KAISEN to improve the economic performances of small and medium-sized enterprises in Douala.

The Japanese project to improve quality, competiveness and productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises called KAISEN is now applicable in Cameroon. Minister of Small

and Medium-sized Enterprises, Prof. Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, launched the Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAISEN) for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the port city of Douala June 30.

The project, the Minister underscored, has come to diversify cooperation from education and health to training. “Cameroon-Japan cooperation is objective and more so because Japan as an industrial power is an example of success in the world,” he lauded.

Cameroon has entered its decisive phase with the training of 43 consultants on the 5S/KAISEN method which seeks to improve quality and productivity of SMEs for two years (September 2015 to August 2017). Trainees were from companies based in Yaounde and Douala. Carried out with the collaboration of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), KAISEN, which in Japanese means changing for the better, will enable Cameroon to have a strategy of support for SMEs and a critical amount of public and private consultants in the domain.

First batch of trainees who successfully completed the “8 Weeks Consultant Training Course on Quality and Productivity Improvement for SMEs” in Douala from May 3-June 24, 2016 were received their certificates. Edith Laure Pokam said the course will bring the ease of organising work, especially as she has received the tools to make good use of space, as well as financial, marketing and human resources, among other things.

Within the framework of the Tokyo International Conference on the Development of Africa (TICAD), the Japanese government through JICA is carrying out the KAISEN in Ethiopia, Tunisia, Ghana and Kenya, among others, which is a key success to their small and medium-sized companies with improved economic performances. It is a management technique developed after World War II by Japanese companies to resolve the problem of competition in which Japan was facing on the international market. Since 2008 Japan has been using the project as a major aspect in technical cooperation to develop the private sector in Africa.