Hansei
The continuous improvement practice of looking back and thinking about how a process or personal shortcoming can be improved; the Japanese term for ““self-reflection.””
In the Toyota Production System, hansei or reflection meetings typically are held at key milestones and at the end of a project to identify problems, develop countermeasures, and communicate the improvements to the rest of the organization so mistakes aren’t repeated. Thus, hansei is a critical part of organizational learning along with kaizen and standardized work. It sometimes is compared to “check” in the plan-do-check-act improvement cycle.