Project News

The project aims at improving capacity of Kassala State Government to provide better public services to the local community. The most effective way to improve the capacity of civil servants is to assist activities which the civil servants are eager to conduct acknowledging their own interests and initiatives. Activities in Planning Cluster are divided into following three categories: (1) Improving monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity, (2) Improving strategic planning and public financial management capacity, and (3) Improving problem-solving capacity and organizational culture through Kaizen approach. While activity (1) and (2) has been broadly introduced supported by several international donors including UNDP and EU, Kaizen which is originated in Japan, is an unique and one of the most popular approach among the civil servants in Sudan. Since many "Made in Japan" products including cars produced by highest-quality automaker Toyota, have high reputation in Sudan, Kaizen approach has attracted many civil servants who are interested in learning the secrets behind high quality and productivity.

Training participants have visited automatic cotton-weaving machine in Toyota Techno Museum. Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture in Japan

Training participants observing a garbage collection car with advertisement. Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture

As the first step of Kaizen activities, the project organized a study tour for six key staff from Kassala State Ministry of Finance (SMoF) to visit Japan from 9th to 24th September 2011. Director General (DG) of the Ministry, Director and four staff from Directorate of Planning and Development (DPD) have participated. They were expected to become facilitators to introduce Kaizen activities in Kassala State once they have finished the training. The participants learned Kaizen approach through lectures by Japanese experts as well as visits to Japanese local governments in Mie Prefecture, Tottori Prefecture, Nagoya City and Amagasaki City. They also visited Toyota Motor Corporation, where Kaizen approach is applied to improve their daily operation. Two week study trip was busy and tight, but the participants highly appreciated the contents of training and found them interesting and useful. The summary of what they learned is as follows:

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is a Japanese approach for "improvement" or "change for the better", which refers to the philosophy and practice that focus on continuous improvement of work processes based on the ideas by frontline (Gemba) workers. Kaizen approach was originally developed and used in manufacturing industries, but now applied to the operation improvement in the governments.

Basic Features of Kaizen

• Kaizen needs no additional financial investment. If there is no money, we can just give ideas and try to improve quality and productivity without additional investment.
• Kaizen is a participatory approach. Top management, middle managers, supervisors and workers must participate.
• Kaizen is a bottom-up approach. Ideas to improve workplace (Gemba) should come from workers in Gemba, aiming at providing service that satisfies citizens, saving by reducing cost, and smooth work flow (3S concept).
• Basics of Kaizen activities are 5S (sort, separate, shine, standardize, and sustain) and 4M (man, machine, material, method). We can start Kaizen activities by thinking of 5S and 4M.

Why Kassala State Government needs to introduce Kaizen?

• There is a lot of waste of time in our work, so we aim at reducing our work time by 30% through Kaizen activities (First, we need to collect accurate data on working hours).
• We are also facing a major problem of not using the work space effectively nor efficiently, so we need every employee to start 5S activities.

The participants in Kaizen training in Japan are excited about applying what they have gained in Japan so we will continue to support and monitor their actions in their workplace.