Activities in Egypt

With an aim at improving the level of technology in its industrial sector, Egypt’s Ministry of Trade and Industry established the Kaizen Center in April 2006 as an institution to assist with the control and improvement of productivity and quality. The word “kaizen” is from Japanese, meaning “continuous improvement.” Since the Kaizen Center was founded, JICA has been providing support in the following areas:

• Country-focused Training
  Cooperation Period: FY2005
  JICA Support: acceptance of technical training participants (four persons, twice)
• Short-term Senior Volunteer Program: productivity improvement
  Cooperation Periods: February to August 2006, November 2006 to August 2007
  JICA Support: Guidance by senior volunteer Nishida

This JICA support has allowed the Kaizen Center to hold many seminars and provide consulting services to companies in Egypt. JICA began implementation of the Kaizen Center Support Project at the request of the Egyptian government to further promote these activities.

The overall focus of the project is to strengthen the Kaizen Center as the parent organization for promoting productivity campaigns in Egypt. As part of this push, Kaizen Center workers are providing consulting services on techniques to manage productivity and quality as well as to conduct training and workshops. Steps are also being taken to strengthen the management structure at the Kaizen Center, and a network is being built of private companies and public agencies that can assist in effectively developing productivity campaigns in Egypt.

Project Highlights

The Kaizen Center Support Project includes support for seminars and consulting under the guidance of a specialist from Japan. The enthusiastic response from some of the seminar participants has been so strong, more detailed workshops and training courses have been set up to look more deeply into training and other issues.

Conventionally, Egyptian companies did not collect data as a basis for problem-solving. Through these guidance activities, engineers at a number of companies have begun gathering data, which has led to improvements. Another impact already being seen is the fruitful ideas that have come out of consultations during seminars.