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The term "Kaizen" refers to a philosophy of continuous improvement through the elimination of waste. Although it is best known for improving manufacturing systems, the kaizen philosophy is also applicable to vehicle systems.  A vehicle is a collection of complex systems (ie. engine, transmission, suspension, etc.) and each of these systems contain waste that negatively affects the efficiency of the overall system. Optimizing each of these systems, by eliminating or reducing the inherent inefficiencies, can translate into improved performance on the track.

Before waste in a system can be eliminated or reduced, you must first know what the waste looks like.  Therefore, Kaizen Motorsports has categorized the waste that is found within a vehicle into six types or forms of waste in order to make them easily recognizable.  These forms of waste all create losses to the overall system and are categorized by the accronym FASTIP.  FASTIP stands for:  Frictional, Aerodynamic, Static Weight, Thermodynamic, Inertial and Parasitic.  Kaizen Mototrsports uses these types of waste as a guide when establishing our product line for today's motorsports enthusiasts. It is our goal to provide solutions to these performance killers by offering high quality, unique and innovative products that will allow you to continuously improve your vehicles performance.

Consider This

With most high performance gas internal combustion engines operating between 30 - 35 percent efficiency that are coupled to drivetrains that are operating between 75 - 85 percent efficiency, it is appropriate for us to view a racecar or high performance vehicle as a system of losses.  Based on these approximations, a vehicle system only converts  between 22 - 30 percent of a fuel's energy into mechanical work at the drive wheels.  So where did the remainder of the fuel's energy go?  It exited the vehicle system without contributing to its motivation.  Most of which was lost straight out of the exhaust in the form of heat or unburned fuel and the rest was lost to the cooling system or converted into waste heat due to friction, pumping losses, parasitic drag, inertial losses, etc.

Once the vehicle is in motion, the losses just keep on coming in the form of rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag and brake drag.  So now, the relatively small amount of energy that was converted into mechanical energy at the drive wheels is now being wasted away by more opposing forces. 

So with this in mind, if you want to increase a vehicle's performance, you must either utilize more fuel,  a more energetic fuel or continuously and systematically reduce or eliminate waste or losses from the vehicle system.  This is KAIZEN.  Continuous Improvement Through Waste Elimination.
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Forms of Waste - F A S T I P
Frictional
Aerodynamic
Static Weight
Thermodynamic
Inertial
Parasitic
"Continuous Improvement Through Waste Elimination"
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