Well, for starters, a kata is a small, well-structured protocol or routine that becomes second nature through practice. The point of the kata is to acquire the habits of thought and action through practice, rather than to just memorize the routine. And, a kata makes these skills transferable to others, which is an important part of developing a sustained culture of continuous improvement within an organization.
Toyota’s improvement processes come from two fundamental kata - the improvement kata (or problem solving) and the coaching kata.
The Toyota problem solving kata encourages working on single issues and single countermeasures in rapid succession. Operating this way increases the organization’s knowledge and understanding of that process. The goals of this kata are to learn about the system itself to fully understand the situation, and to apply only one countermeasure at a time (so that you can accurately identify cause and effect).
At Toyota, leaders offer guidance for solving problems in the correct ways, helping to develop employees’ problem solving skills. In this way, it is the team members, not the supervisors, who find the solutions to problems. Most improvement efforts are “bottom up,” relying on and improving upon each employee’s knowledge base.