The continuous improvement philosophy of Kaizen: Petrolimex Saigon’s spirit

09:11 AM @ Tuesday - 14 April, 2015

On April 10th 2015, at Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Hall, Vietnam’s Kaizen Institute was supported by Petrolimex Saigon and consulted by Prof. – Dr. Nguyen Quang Toan, held “Management Improvement” course so that Prof. Masaaki Imai – Founder and President of Kaizen Institute Consulting Group, along with Prof. Carsten Otto – Executive General Director taught the continuous improvement philosophy of Kaizen management theory and shared practial experiences of the world’s biggest companies for Vietnamese organizations and enterprises.

Kaizen course holding on April 10th 2015 at Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Hall

Representatives of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology, Social Organizations, Universities, Vietnam and Foreign-Invested Enterprises with near 200 trainees take part in this Kaizen course. For Petrolimex, quality teams with near 30 peoples (including Petrolimex Saigon, Ba Ria – Vung Tau and Tien Giang) are their leaders, managers and specialists to be joined in this course.

Representative of Petrolimex Saigon introduces, shares experiences with “15 Years – Applying for advanced management standards and tools” topic, and accents achievement as well as effectiveness. At the same time, points out challenges and barriers that have happened in our company’s practice, but the biggest problem is improvement results which have not yet been gained as expectation although Director Board has always commited and kept firmly to purse “Quality – Effective – Safety”.

Petrolimex Saigon Deputy Director Nguyen Van Canh introducing the state of quality management
implementation of the organizations, enterprises in Vietnam and opening Kaizen course

Prof. Masaaki Imai and Prof. Carsten Otto explains for people to understood rightly the definition and the spirit of Kaizen philosophy (continuous improvement for the better) who has been appreciated by the international’ magazines and specialists about “Kaizen – The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success”. At the same time, guiding to apply the improvement tools, such as: 5S Practice Model, Standardization, Statistical Process Control, Flow, … identifying and eliminating the seven wastes or muda in enterprises. Professors also shares the experiences and the examples to display in improvement process of the world’s biggest companies.

Prof. Masaaki Imai introducing Kaizen
for leadership and management

Prof. Carsten Otto introducing Kaizen
and improvement tools for people

Through this course, the trainees are approached the essential of Kaizen management theory practically, listened the useful information about the knowledge of the latest management technologies to improve its system continuously. Once more, Learders / managers and quality specialists of Petrolimex Saigon are reinforced their knowledge, decisiving to take Kaizen’s spirit to do on the premises for changing employees’ awareness before applying Total Quality Management (TQM) into our company.

And on April 9th 2015, Prof. Masaaki Imai visited and worked at Petrolimex Saigon as soon as he came Vietnam in the first time. Through learning the state of business activities and applying for advanced management standards & tools at our company, Professor gave some highly valuable advices and some scientific valuable consultancies to help our company to be promoted more improvement.

Prof. Masaaki Imai visiting and working with Petrolimex Saigon Leader at Head Office

... listening representative of Petrolimex Saigon to introduce our company and challenges in applying ISO

… visiting at Retail Petroleum Station No.1

… and taking souvenir pictures with Petrolimex Saigon

Process of 15 Years – Applying for advanced management standards and tools at Petrolimex Saigon :

From 1997, applied the competence of testing management system following ISO 17025:2005 which is accredited in 2001 by VILAS.

From 2002, started to apply The Quality Management System following to ISO 9001 standard in “Wholesale, import – export and storage of petrol”; From 2003 expanding the applying scope in “Retail”; From 2007 continuing to expand the applying scope in “Other Business Products and Services”, outside the scope of petroleum.

From 2007, applying The Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems following to OHSAS 18001 and The Environmental Management Systems following to ISO 14001 in Nha Be Oil Terminal; From 2012, expanding the applying scope of The Environmental Management Systems following to ISO 14001 in “Collection, Transportation, Treatment and Disposal of Hazardous Waste” at the hazardous waste treatment plant of Petrolimex Saigon Commercial and Engineering Services Enterprise.

From 2009, applied The 5S Practicing Model at our petroleum stations. Up to now, after five applying years, the 5S model cover total operations at the company.

From 2010, applied ERP following the project of Vietnam National Petroleum Group with scope includes business, accounting, finance and logistics.

Nowadays, Integrated Management System of Petrolimex Saigon has been leaned (called shortly QSHE) in order to manage all business activities in our company.

Pictures of Kaizen course :