Imai was in Mumbai to mark the inception of the first Kaizen Institute in India. Imai emphasized the `cost' element which forms the core of a TQM process stating that cost management should be preferred to cost-cutting which involves restructuring, down-sizing, etc.

Dwelling on how a Japanese company improves productivity through Kaizen, Imai compared a Japanese company's assembly line which is 100 meters long with a French company's assembly line which was 15 times longer.

He said that companies will have to gear up to move from batch production to the new paradigm of Just-in-Time production which requires a change in mindset. Imai gave theToyota example stressing on the fact that Toyota is one company which has practiced JIT for over a quarter of a century, and is the most profitable company today.

The Kaizen Institute is adept in throughput time reduction, TPM & TQM, cost reduction, productivity improvement, problem solving, down-time reduction, set up time reduction and Gemba Kaizen workshops. The Institute has been instrumental in successfully conducting these workshops for Taj Hotels, Ispat Industries, Jolly Board, Hindustan Lever, Telco and Castrol.