| Production | |||
| Lean production system | 1. Production Keiretsu (vertical) | Part Suppliers - Mftr (Assembler) | |
| Part Suppliers outstide the (parent) company | => "lean" production | ||
| Long-term business relationships with part suppliers | |||
| JIT (just in time) method | Minimizing the inventory level, the length of queues, etc. | ||
| 2. Simple job description | nice coordination under vague division of labor | ||
| 3. job rotaion | multiskilling | ||
| 4. OJT | |||
| 5. Quality Control (QC) circles | |||
| 6. Egalitarianism with respect to: | holidays, medical benefits, parking, cafeteria, open style office, uniform | [Corporate hierarchy -- rank and status -- with respect to age and seniority] | |
| Quality Control (QC) | Origins of Total Quality Mgmt(TQM) or Total Quality Control (TQC): The idea of total quality (TQ) began with Joseph Juran and Edward Deming, both American academics. | In the 1930s, Sir Walter Shewhart, a laboratory physicist, created ideas of Statistical Quality Control in America. | |
| During WW II, Deming and Juran elaborated upon the ideas, which now form the basis of Total (not just statistical) Quality Control, and put forward a sophisticated theory of how to improve production at all levels: | esp., a theory of how to re-organize human resources so that people, the greatest resource of the firm, use their time to the greatest effect | ||
| Deming's main points for TQ | Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service. | ||
| Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. | |||
| End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. | |||
| Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service. | |||
| Institute training on the job. | |||
| Break down barriers between staff areas. | => Ambiguous job boundaries and responsiblity | ||
| Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone. | |||
| kaizen: the Jpn term for continous improvement. | This is the Jpn adaptation of TQ. | ||
| Quality Control (QC) Circles: The whole workforce would meet in groups to discuss how to improve quality | |||
| Suggestion system | The Jpn company managers perceive the suggestion system not as a way of rooting out trouble-makers, but rather as means of persuading workers to think of ways they could increase productivity, and save time and money. | ||
| This reflects the Jpn view of people as the company's most important resource. | |||
| The theory of TQ is very important to the understanding of Jpn decision-making processes. | Many of Deming and Juran's ideas were based on a form of collectivity. | The Deming and Juran ideas were not accepted in America in the late 50s; condemned as being unsuitable. | SQC had become widely used in Jpn before being taken up inthe West more recently. |
| A positive audience in Japan, a society which traditionally exploited ideas of cooperation based on group-oriented behaviour and consensus. | The Jpn strong foundation in groupism and vertical egalitarianism is intact (= preseved), and there are few dissenters (= those who differ in opinion). | ||
| The Deming and Juran ideas are not directly production-oriented; rather their strongest focus is on the social organization (=human side) of industry. | It is consistent with the Jpn ideas that the human mgmt of people is an art and that human resources are the most imoportant recource in any complex org. | ||
| The Deming ideas emphasize the group coupled with egalitarianism and ranking, and the need to have a thoroughly systematic approach. | The Confucianist-based ranking and hirarchical system in Jpn and the way it is reflected in the language, all provide a systematic holistic org. whereby almost all social roles are prescribed and the structure of the org. is not fluid (unstable). | This provides a more stable foundation for systematic approach that can more readily implement ideas that need to be worked our for the entire system. | |
| SQC links quality information with accountability: the workforce is responsible for its own mistakes. | This eliminates many inspectors and fixers, greately reducing indirect costs. | ||
| The Deming ideas of not using inspectors was linked to the basic underlying decision-making process practised by the Jpn. | The Jpn had a decision-making process in which problems were minimized through pre-impact extensive evaluation: | *Deming's wheel: Step1 (Planning and pre-impact extensive evaluation: time-consuming stage) -> 2 (Doing: quick stage) -> 3 Checking (Time for this is to be minimized) -> 4 Correcting and Improving (Time for this is to be minimized) -> 1 | |
| To evaluate first extensively makes action as risk-free as possible and involves as many company members as possible in this process, and to empower (=to give official authority) actual operators in decision-making processes in their production sphere. | |||
| Such evaluation seeks feedback from up and down and across the corporation, and only when consensus is reached is action taken. |