Walk into almost any management presentation and you will eventually hear the word “kaizen.” It gets used loosely, often as a synonym for improvement projects or efficiency drives, sometimes without any clear methodology behind it. At Abdul Latif Jameel Motors, the authorized Toyota distributor in Saudi Arabia, it means something more precise than that.
Kaizen — the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement pioneered by Toyota — entered Abdul Latif Jameel’s operations alongside the first Toyota vehicles it imported in the 1950s. Over seven decades, it has become embedded in how the company approaches day-to-day work: not as a periodic initiative, but as a default way of thinking about every process, every task, and every person doing that work.
The distinction matters. Hassan Jameel, Vice Chairman, Saudi Arabia, of Abdul Latif Jameel, who spent time in Toyota’s domestic kaizen division in Japan in 2004, has described what separates kaizen-as-culture from kaizen-as-label. “It’s about how you build that mentality into your lifestyle, so it becomes automatic,” he said. “Every day thinking about what you could do to improve. It doesn’t matter how small, as long as you’re trying to improve something every day.”
That philosophy produces results that are, by definition, small on their own. A driver at a Jeddah showroom noticed his team’s stock yard lanes were positioned more than 150 meters from the exit gate, adding hours of walking time each day across hundreds of vehicle movements a month. He raised the issue with his manager, the lanes were reassigned, and a process that had consumed three to four hours was reduced to 15 minutes.
No technology investment. No outside consultant. One observation, one conversation, one change.