Applying Kaizen (Incremental Innovation) in a Mexican Handcrafted Talavera Company: A Case Study Approach

Innovation in organizations is a management approach that helps achieve high standards of competitiveness in today’s markets, in addition to the financial and economic success so sought after in the 21st century. Many organizations today are committed to making efforts of some kind of innovation; call it product innovation, process innovation or even business model innovation. In Mexico and the rest of Ibero America, some craft organizations have begun to make efforts of some kind of incremental one, also known by its Japanese name “Kaizen”. This paper presents a case study methodology based on an artisanal company that manufactures “Talavera” products in Puebla Mexico. The company applied incremental innovation in some of its artisanal processes to significantly improve its operations by reducing MUDA (waste) and errors in manual processes.