Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices with the ultimate goal of achieving complete efficiency at every step of the production process. Kaizen events improve employee engagement by giving staff the opportunity to actively participate in improving production processes and can lead to significant cost savings for companies.

Since introduced at Cherkizovo in 2014, kaizen events have contributed to RUB 68.2 million in efficiency savings and have led to 1,082 improvement proposals from employees, of which 805 have been approved and implemented. During the last year alone, a total of RUB 53.2 million was saved after the suggested changes were implemented.

During the first, two-week lean production pilot project in 2014, there was a boost in employee engagement, which led to a 10 per cent improvement in labour efficiency. Building on this success, the programme was introduced at CMPP’s five subsidiaries and kaizen contests are now held every quarter at the production facilities. Ulyanovsk Meat Processing Plant, a subsidiary of CMPP, took first place in the most recent contest for effectively implementing a lean production system.

Andrei Cholokyan, member of Cherkizovo Group’s management team and head of CMPP, commented: "Through our kaizen events at CMPP, we have been able to create a new working culture where every employee is encouraged to suggest improvements to the production process.

"Employees are motivated both materially and through contests. Given the improvements in employee engagement and production efficiencies, we look forward to continuing to hold our kaizen events in the future."