As part of its efforts to provide training programs that enhance practical skills and reduce waste of time, effort and money, Community Jameel Saudi, in partnership with the General Administration of Education in Jeddah and Four Principles Company, is introducing the Kaizen Lean Management Program in Saudi schools. The aim is to consolidate the understanding of the continuous improvement approach (kaizen) and build the foundations of lean management in schools, in line with the vision of the Ministry of Education and the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 to address existing challenges, reduce waste and restore the competitive strength of schools.

Community Jameel Saudi intends to implement the lean management approach at the school level in Saudi Arabia, which includes three phases: A detailed analysis of the school’s current situation, designing solutions and experimental implementation, and measuring performance.

The first trial will be launched in May at Qurtubah Private School in Jeddah. Volunteers from the school will be selected and trained during the pilot phase and included as leaders in the following stages to disseminate the working mechanism, solutions and tools to other schools in the region. The specialized Four Principles team will lead the analysis, solution design, and implementation stages. It will also train volunteers from the school and ensure their readiness with an advisory team to replicate the experience in other schools.

Mansour Al-Qahtani, principal of Qurtubah Private School, said: “The lean management approach applies to a wide range of administrative and educational processes. We hope to achieve good results by improving the quality of administrative and educational processes. The lean management approach in educational institutions will help redesign working methods, build new capabilities and skills, and increase its organizational capacity to ensure quality in our joint efforts toward achieving the goals of our national agenda and providing a world-class education system.”

Hassan Jameel, vice chairman of Community Jameel Saudi, said: “In an era of unprecedented national and institutional transformation under Vision 2030, we believe now is the right time to talk about how the kaizen culture of continuous improvement can help drive the excellence and competitiveness of Saudi Arabia’s education sector. That is why we are proud to introduce the Kaizen Lean Management Program in partnership with the General Administration of Education in Jeddah and Four Principles Company, which will serve to strengthen the quality of education in schools across the Kingdom. With this program, Saudi students, teachers, and the school management can strive to improve performance, achieve greater competitiveness and increase efficiency.”

The lean management experience is a set of approaches that seek to improve business processes by making simple changes to achieve more with fewer resources and achieve transformation by striving for perfection in performance by focusing on reducing waste, eliminating redundant activities or procedures, and creating a smooth and logical path of procedures and processes focused on value and ensuring the sustainability of service provision.