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Foundational
Every digital investment dips before it pays — unless the plant's process knowledge is rebuilt first. Digital Kaizen is a 100-day programme that sequences the climb — operations first, digital as the multiplier — built on doctoral research and proven on the hardest brownfield floors there are.
Most mid-market manufacturers operate at 50–65% OEE, carry excess working capital, lack real-time cost visibility, and under-extract incentives. Dashboards get installed. Sensors get wired. AI gets licensed. And nothing moves.
The missing layer is process knowledge — the tacit know-how that converts digital tools into productive action. Without it, digital does not stick.
Digital Kaizen is the coupling. Kaizen routines — PDCA, standard work, Gemba — are the vehicle through which process knowledge accumulates. Digital tools are the multiplier. Deployed together, in sequence, they compound.
The methodology is developed through doctoral research at the University of Cape Town, tested monthly against the systems literature, and proven on real brownfield floors. It is published, argued, and open to scrutiny — before it is sold.
Each intervention is deployed only once the foundation beneath it is functioning. Instrumentation before analytics. Analytics before AI.
Manually-measured OEE baseline. Tiered stand-ups from line team to executive. Visible, physical, self-sustaining within 60 days.
Twelve to twenty Kaizen events in year one, led by senseis with explicit capability transfer. A3, 5-Why, DMAIC matched to problem size.
Vendor-agnostic sensors and gateways feeding a standard reference architecture. Full instrumentation in 3–6 months.
Three time horizons, three audiences. Every dashboard owns a decision. Charts without action attached are deleted.
Predictive maintenance, machine vision, demand forecasting, yield optimisation, energy. Deployed selectively — never for its own sake.
Cobots, AGVs, vision-guided and process-specific. Applied where Kaizen cannot move the ceiling — not to automate existing waste.
An integrated digital backbone in which a customer order flows from CRM through ERP planning, MES execution, instrumented production and dispatch — every step visible, every step measurable. The platform on which AI decision-making actually sits.
Process knowledge is the coupling.— Digital Kaizen, first principles
Without it, digital does not stick.
We engage with owners, boards and operations teams where leadership is committed to a multi-year programme.
Pre-sale value creation, post-acquisition integration, family businesses preparing the next generation.
COOs, plant managers and operations directors who want the tools, standard work and capability to sustain gains.
Private-equity investors deploying Digital Kaizen into portfolio companies as a repeatable value-creation programme.
A sequenced programme — operations first, digital as multiplier — deployed through the same 100-day foundations on every engagement and compounded over a multi-year horizon.
Every engagement balances three forces that constantly pull against each other. Tip too far toward any one and the transformation fails — this is why most industrial AI sinks in the productivity J-curve rather than climbing out of it.
Equilibrium is never static. The homeostat holds the centre as the three forces shift — the discipline of Digital Kaizen is keeping it there. Drag to look around — you are inside the loop.
Everything we do must clear these lines before work begins.
If the shop floor cannot hold a standard for 30 consecutive days, no software gets installed. Stability is a precondition for digital, not a product of it.
Every claim is instrumented. OEE, throughput, working capital, energy, yield — each has a data line back to a sensor, a scanner, or a signed measurement.
Tools transfer; tacit know-how does not. Every intervention includes explicit capability transfer — sensei-to-team, documented, assessed.
No licence survives an 18-month payback test. Dashboards without attached decisions are deleted. AI without measurable lift is turned off.
A single reference architecture across the engagement. No lock-in. Interoperable data layer so capability and playbooks travel.
The engagement is successful only when the plant can sustain the programme without us. Sensei disengagement is scheduled from day one.
Every intervention corresponds to a level. A business cannot be moved to Level 4 without passing through 2 and 3.
Process knowledge is the coupling.— Digital Kaizen, first principles
Without it, digital does not stick.
Each intervention has a specific output, a payback window, and a capability it transfers.
Every Digital Kaizen engagement begins the same way — with a two-week diagnostic — and scales from there. Choose the track that fits the business.
A two-week on-site assessment. Manual OEE baseline, loss ranking, value-creation bridge, capability audit. Ends with a signed 100-day plan.
The full foundational programme. Daily management live, first Kaizen events complete, instrumentation plan signed off. You run the rest.
End-to-end deployment through all seven interventions. Monthly steering. Embedded senseis. Handover milestones at month 18 and 36.
A single template applied to every client. Variance lies in the findings, not the process.
Manual OEE captured on every major asset. Finance and operations reconciled to one number. Top 20 losses ranked by EBITDA impact.
Tiered daily management live from line to executive. Three Kaizen events completed on highest-ranked losses. Standard work documented for the top-three products.
Sensor rollout complete on critical assets. Reference architecture live. First real-time dashboards retired their manual equivalents.
Value-creation plan signed by management and board. Three-year EBITDA bridge agreed. Capability transfer plan published. Year-one Kaizen calendar locked.
Across 40+ prior engagements, value resolves into six components. Shape is consistent; mix varies.
We are selective. An engagement only works when management is committed and the business has the scale to compound.
Digital Kaizen is led by its founder, Gys Kappers, drawing on an independent network of senseis, engineers and implementation specialists deployed to client sites as each engagement requires.
Every engagement is led personally, and built on an operating network assembled for the work.
Founder of Catalyst Digital and author of the Digital Kaizen playbook. Thirty years in manufacturing and operations: scaled Columbia DBL into the largest privately-owned concrete-masonry business in Southern Africa — applying Kaizen and fully digitising operations — then founded the frontline-engagement platform Wyzetalk and led the manufacturing-AI company DataProphet. Now a PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town, where his research develops the Digital Kaizen Homeostat.
Independent senseis, engineers and domain specialists, brought into client sites per engagement under short-term contract.
Kaizen and standard-work specialists, brought into improvement events by sector.
Former plant managers and operations directors available as interim leadership during transition.
Engineers specialising in IoT rollout, MES integration and dashboard engineering.
Applied ML engineers for predictive maintenance, machine vision, forecasting and yield optimisation.
Revenue-management specialists deployed when commercial uplift is a material line in the bridge.
Specialists in S12-I, APDP, AIS and SEZ application, with in-house government-relations support.
Every claim has a citation, every number has a sensor or a signed source. Narratives that cannot be audited do not survive the 100-day plan.
Our senseis work in blues, not suits. Most of the engagement happens on the shop floor, next to the asset, with the people running it.
The engagement is successful when the plant can run the programme without us. Sensei disengagement is scheduled in the 100-day plan, not negotiated at month 24.
Every engagement includes a named skills-development plan mapped to B-BBEE and SETA frameworks — not as a bolt-on, but as part of how the programme compounds.
A bi-weekly newsletter, occasional papers, and our annual State of Manufacturing letter. Written by the partners, for operators and investors.
Working papers, conference submissions and our annual State of Manufacturing letter.
Empirical study across 40 mid-market manufacturers. Documents the 18-month dip in productivity that follows most digital transformations, and proposes the Digital Kaizen coupling as the mitigating structure.
Catalyst's annual letter. Commentary on energy, localisation, APDP reform, SEZ uptake, and the supply-side conditions facing mid-market manufacturers into FY26.
Catalyst's vendor-agnostic reference architecture. Covers edge, gateway, historian, analytics and AI layers. The technical appendix to the Digital Kaizen programme.
One edition every other Thursday. Occasional papers. Our annual letter. Written by the partners.
We route every enquiry through one of three channels. Please choose the one that fits — it gets your message to the right partner fastest.
LP enquiries. Pitch book and LPA under NDA. Fund structure, terms, track record diligence.
Founders, shareholders, and management considering a sale or partnership.
Media, speaking, advisors, careers, partnerships, and everything else.
Leave your details. We reply within two business days with a mutual NDA and the full data room.
Every enquiry is answered personally, by email — not a shared inbox.
Where the practice is based.
Answers to the questions we field most often. More in the full fund documentation.