Modular kaizen: Dealing with Disruptions aims to help health departments achieve quick improvements in disruptive environments. Modular kaizen is the creation of an improvement or redesign project planned along a timeline that recognizes the highly volatile nature of the public health organization’s core business processes. High-priority projects are planned at the senior leadership level to establish realistic milestones, resources, and measurements to ensure a return on investment that includes not only financial commitment but also the involvement of highly skilled facilitators and subject matter experts.

Modular kaizen is an approach that resists the urge to respond to a disruption with panic. Once the process is stabilized, a full PDCA cycle is undertaken to develop a plan and action steps to minimize the recurrence of the disruption proactively. The final step at the end of any Modular kaizen activity is to document successes and lessons learned. Sharing the benefit of this planned modular improvement approach to crisis strengthens the total organizational leadership system. 

This book was published online in March 2011. In August 2011, two of the authors published an article on a related topic, entitled "Using the Voice of the Customer to Align Processes in Service Industries" for the Process Excellence Network.

The Public Health Foundation offers customized Kaizen technical assistance and training services to support the use of Kaizen and Modular kaizen approaches.