著者

児玉 顕彦

出版者

国際開発学会

雑誌

国際開発研究 (ISSN:13423045)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, no.2, pp.41-53, 2018-11-30 (Released:2019-04-04)

参考文献数

29

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Small and medium enterprises (SME) development is regarded as an essential factor of industrial development, economic transformation, and then sustainable economic development. To promote SME development, JICA has frequently applied Kaizen in the projects, which helps enterprises to improve productivity and quality of their products. Cooperation on Kaizen started in Southeast Asia, where massive expansion of the Japanese manufacturing industry stimulated needs for quality and productivity upgrade of SMEs. In Latin America and Caribbean countries, cultural similarity enabled to realize regional cooperation by mobilizing core organizations such as the Centro de Capacitación en Produc-tividad y Calidad (CECAPRO) in Costa RIca, and the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (INTI) in Argentina. Cooperation in Africa has started later than the other regions, but is now put more emphasis. Following the engagement done in Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) VI, JICA together with the New Partnership For Africa's Development (NEPAD) launched “Africa Kaizen Initiative” to accelerate promotion of Kaizen in the continent.From the lessons learned through the projects implemented, following points should be taken into account in order to promote and sustain Kaizen in developing countries. First, demand (SMEs), supply (Kaizen providers), and market mechanism of Kaizen service should be taken into account. Second, resources and networks all over the world should be effectively mobilized. Thirdly, promote Kaizen in broader concept, including management skills, for more comprehensive SME promotion. Further, topics like innovation and impact analysis are to be tackled, in order to shed light on mechanism of Kaizen.