PMI Chapter of Mauritius PMI Chapter of Mauritius — Embracing Kaizen for Continuous Business Improvement
Last week, I attended my first PMI Mauritius Chapter event, a talk on Embracing Kaizen for Continuous Business Improvement. Stepping into the PMI community was a new experience for me, quite different from our usual tech meetups.
On Thursday, 6th March 2025, the PMI Chapter of Mauritius hosted a talk on Embracing Kaizen for Continuous Business Improvement, at Flying Dodo, Bagatelle.
This was my first time attending a PMI event.
I very recently joined the Project Management Institute as a member which automatically made me part of the local chapter. My mentor and esteemed colleague, Eddy Lareine, played a significant role in this development as my career progressed. This year marks a decade of my employment at La Sentinelle, and much of what I’ve learned about project management has come through Eddy’s guidance.
Arriving at the event
The event was scheduled at 6 p.m. in the conference room upstairs of Flying Dodo. I reached Bagatelle at 6 p.m. sharp and called Eddy to check whether he was already at Flying Dodo. He answered that he was reaching too, within a minute. Indeed, as I was still on the phone call, he arrived.
As we walked to Flying Dodo, I had quite a few questions on my mind — how formal or informal these events typically are, whether I was dressed appropriately or was too casual, and so on. In fact, before we started walking he asked me to leave my backback in the car, reassuring me with a simple, "be chill and enjoy the conversations".
See, thing is, I am used to the casual geek talks of our tech meetups. Last year, when I attended my first corporate conference (also a tech event), outside Mauritius, where I had a scheduled talk, I ended being overdressed in a suit. So, my questions about formality were valid.
As we reached the conference room a few members had already arrived — mostly were PMI Mauritius Board Executives. I got a chance to meet them as Eddy did the intros. The President, Sareeta Nundloll-Goundan, warmly welcomed me and encouraged me to be active within the PMI community in Mauritius.
Shortly after, more members joined in and Aroun Poligadu, who was the speaker for the talk, also arrived. Aroun is Group Director for iQera. He is a founding member of the PMI Chapter of Mauritius — in fact, he was its first president. I've known Aroun for a few years now as he has been actively involved in tech communities in Mauritius, contributing to and supporting initiatives like the MSCC meetups and the Developers Conference. He was even on my panel discussion on Technology and The Future of Work at the Developers Conference 2022.
Snacks and refreshments were available before the talk started. It was a good opportunity to network with some of them, me being new there.
The session started with a welcome speech by the President, Sareeta Nundloll-Goundan, who gave a brief introduction to the talk.
Then, Aroun began his presentation by explaining the meaning of the Japanese word Kaizen, which translates to "good change".
He discussed the philosophy of continuous improvement through small, incremental steps and the goal of achieving “zero defects”—or at least striving towards it. He shared his experience on how Kaizen was adopted at his company, detailing the initial challenges they faced and how, through persistence and discipline, measurable results started appearing after six months.
Aroun also spoke about how the Toyota production system has been extensively studied, copied, and adapted worldwide by enterprise gurus. He played a short documentary video illustrating how a small change in a factory’s workflow—such as introducing a screw dispenser to save workers a few seconds per task—led to significant productivity gains across the production line.
He further elaborated on Lean methodology, focusing on minimizing or eliminating waste in business processes.
Aroun introduced the A3 Report, a structured and visual problem-solving tool used in Kaizen implementations. It aligns with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle and helps organizations:
• Identify a problem
• Analyze why it occurs
• Work towards a sustainable solution rather than a temporary band-aid fix
This methodology ensures that improvements address the root cause instead of merely providing short-term relief.
During the talk, Aroun mentioned several books, two of which I noted down for future reading.
- Atomic Habits, by James Clear
- Creating Level Pull, by Art Smalley
The event was enriching with knowledge for managers looking to bring productivity improvements within their teams. I certainly learned a lot and I really appreciated the networking time — it was well worth the time spent.