Need advice designing database

We have a program at work called Kaizen. Any ideas the employees come up with the help the company save money, improve quality or improve safety and productivity, we get assigned points that we can convert into cash.

We would like to track these things. Here is the information we would like to capture:
Name,
department,
kaizen type,
kaizen name,
savings (if any),
kaizen summary,
start date,
graded date,
notes (kaizen),
whether there was an incentive (bonus points),
points earned to date,
points cashed in

Also certain types have certain point value:
log - 3pts,
best theme (semi annual contest) - 20 points.,
etc.

I had decided on the following tables:

Employees - empid, fname, lname
dept - empid, did, dept
team - empid, teamid, team
incentive - iid, name, summary
points earned - pointseid, empid, kaizenid, points
points cashed - empid, date, pts
kaizen - kaizenid, empid, teamid, pointseid, incentiveid, kaizen type, kaizen name, savings, summary, start date, graded date, notes

So far, I am using mysql 5, and am having trouble. I'm not sure where the trouble is, but I suspect that my database design is really flawed. Can someone assist me in organizing project?

Thanks in advance.

-Mac

not so sure , but by looking the table structures, its seems bit odd to me, i guess u need to define proper relationship b/w each tables, here i m clearly seeing redundant relations(may b its ur requirement)
for e.g
kaizen - kaizenid, empid, teamid, pointseid, incentiveid...
empID and TeamID also are linked in Team Table

i only recommend to define cardinality(relationship) b/w each tables and normalize them accordingly...

Gadzooks! You are correct, I did not catch that, doh!

Basically, I was giving the information to capture and wanting to know how someone else would approach the table design.

I trimmed this down quite a bit. I merged the emp, dept and team tables together. I removed the points earned and incentive tables.

Redesigned the kaizen table to reflect those changes. The issue is that I need to make sure that I'm not going to end up getting painted into a data corner. I was always instructed to place like things together, which I believe I have done in this example, but I really was looking for a second opinion and any suggestions to help me from making a mistake.

Thanks very much for your response.

-Mac