Kaizen in the Arabian Peninsula

By Jon Miller | Post Date: October 11, 2005 10:35 AM | Comments: 0

Oman now has something called The Lean Government Award. Oman is a country located on the toe of the Arabian Peninsula with a population of about 3 million.

Oman is one of a number of states in the area who have been actively studying kaizen. For instance the Department of Economic Development (DED) reports that they are the first government office in UAE to implement kaizen (possibly the first in the Middle East).

Dr. Masaaki Imai has been active in promoting Kaizen in the Arab peninsula since at least 2003. The Kaizen Institute now has offices in Oman, Bahrain, Iran, and UAE. This September the DED of United Arab Emirates launched a guidebook on kaizen based on Dr. Imai's work.

Teams from these countries have attended study missions to Japan through programs the AOTS offers. The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarships is a Japanese non-profit that offers pretty darn good training opportunities in the area of Lean manufacturing and kaizen to developing countries. If you qualify, you should take advantage of these programs.

The Lean Government Award is one of five parameters that have been identified to gauge economic freedom by the Frasier Institute as part of a grant to produce the Arab Freedom Index. The other four are Rule of Law Award, Sound Money Award, Free Trade Award and Ease of Business Award. Hopefully this will give Lean government a high profile in the world.

If economic freedom means money flows through markets according to customer pull, Lean governments shouldn't get in the way.

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