Automobile giant Toyota has long been regarded for their efficient manufacturing and business practices. Having pioneered the use of “kaizen” principles of “continuous improvement”, Toyota has been lauded as the paragon of efficient production and quality control.
This is also applied to its software for its cars, with the understanding that the know-how does not reside in an individual alone, but the “accumulation of small improvements” from other team members. Indeed, Toyota was one of the first companies to understand the correlation between quality and participatory systems.
In the IT world, the equivalent of kaizen is open source software. Open source has been one of the most disruptive forces in the last decade, with many large IT companies leveraging open source software to address growing business demands.
Essentially, open source encourages participation in developing and enhancing software source code – understanding it, finding flaws, fixing it and adding functionality. It advocates continuous improvement, similar to kaizen manufacturing principles, where it encapsulates the power of participation to solve complex problems.
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