Improved Performance of Small but Trained Firms in a Metalworking Cluster in Nairobi, Kenya

This chapter attempts to assess the impacts of teaching the very basics of Kaizen to owners of small enterprises has on their business performance. This experiment was conducted in a metalworking cluster in Nairobi, Kenya. In this cluster, Sonobe et al.’s (2011) observational study found that the enterprises varied considerably in the way they were operated. At some enterprises, more than ten workers worked in an orderly fashion while keeping their workshops neat and tidy. Such enterprises expanded the size of their operation within several years, and a few of them moved to more spacious industrial areas. In the same cluster, however, stagnant enterprises abound. They failed to profit even from seemingly lucrative orders for their products or machining services because the mishandling of materials, injuries, machine breakdowns, and other problems occurred with surprising frequency at their workplaces. Based on these observations, we designed our training program featuring the basics of Kaizen, so that owners of small enterprises could learn how to motivate every worker to participate in workplace housekeeping to improve productivity, safety, and product quality.