Vitaliy Khabenko and the magic of small improvements
Kaizen in the company is often perceived as a separate tool for improvements, but for Vitaliy Khabenko, a leading systems analyst, it is rather a natural continuation of daily work. According to the results of the IV quarter of 2025, he became the best author of Kaizen ideas, although he took the news quite calmly. For him, constant changes, modernization and optimization of processes are not a goal, but the norm of professional life. Over the years of working with various, sometimes complex, systems, he regularly has to implement new approaches and solutions.
With the advent of the Kaizen approach, according to Vitaliy, another convenient “entrance” for initiatives has simply appeared. Previously, most ideas had to be addressed directly to the owners of processes, who then launched changes in their areas of responsibility. Now even small improvements can be initiated faster and more independently, which significantly simplifies the path from idea to result. Especially valuable to him were the ideas that were born within the team during regular discussions and brainstorming sessions. These were simple, at first glance, changes, but they significantly increased the comfort of daily work.
Vitaliy notes with a smile that for programmers, any minor inconvenience can become a serious irritant, so even minimal optimizations are of great importance. He considers the best confirmation of the benefits of such ideas to be the reaction of colleagues after implementation, when messages like: “How good that you did this” appear.
Vitaliy describes the mechanism for the emergence of ideas for improvements very simply: if a certain action is repeated over and over again and does not have an obvious meaning, it begins to “cut the eye”. This is how one of the latest ideas related to the process of responsible storage arose. At the start of the project, due to technical limitations, some of the actions had to be limited to it, but over time the process began to actively scale. Constant manual operations not only distracted from the main work, but also forced colleagues to wait until these actions were completed. At a certain point, it became clear that this was no longer a temporary solution, but a problem that needed to be eliminated. Speaking about the involvement of other employees in the Kaizen process, Vitaliy notes that the key role here is played by the person’s proactivity. There are enough ideas in the team, but not everyone is ready to put them out in public. Despite the fact that the company pays a lot of attention to popularizing the Kaizen culture, training and support from managers, some still hesitate or postpone their proposals “for later”. Vitaliy himself is calm about possible refusals. If the process owner explains with reason that a certain idea will not bring real improvement, he is ready to accept it, because it is the process owner who understands its specifics best. An important role in this dialogue is played by the group leader Oleksandr Svidlo, with whom most ideas are previously discussed. For Vitaliy, it is essential that each initiative is useful in essence, and not presented for the sake of quantity or indicators.
For those who are just thinking about presenting their own ideas, Vitaliy advises not to rush, but not to be afraid either. In his opinion, an idea is not a random thought, but a considered decision for which a person is ready to be responsible and which he can defend with arguments. It is in this format that Kaizen becomes an effective tool that allows everyone to really influence the development of the company.