A Few Lessons to Learn from Japanese Shop Floor Production Management

1. Performance improvement must be achieved through the continuous process of identifying, analyzing, and solving problems. Therefore, the Japanese adopt a “whole-team problem-finding” approach to thoroughly expose issues, and then harness collective wisdom and strength to analyze and resolve them.

This approach is one that Chinese companies will likely never master. Chinese people value self-reflection; if a Chinese person constantly points out others’ shortcomings, that person will become a pariah, shunned by everyone! Typically, we do the following: we don’t speak up to someone’s face, but gossip behind their back; we don’t speak up during meetings, but discuss it afterward; and whether we speak up or not, it’s all just talk.

2. People are required to do only the right things—and they must do them right. Once the safety light is triggered or the button is pressed, the production line must stop immediately, because the Japanese insist on producing only products that meet quality standards.

Since the Japanese have limited human resources, they do not allocate many people to inspect, repair, or rework non-conforming products. Moreover, in their view, inspection and rework are forms of waste in and of themselves.

3. To ensure the right things are done correctly, they seek only the right methods. The Japanese prefer to break down every step and process of a task into minute detail and provide each employee with a detailed, comprehensive set of work instructions. In other words, Japanese human resource management focuses primarily on job analysis—that is, determining how to use the right methods to accomplish the right tasks.

Japanese companies generally operate under a lifetime employment system. Since they cannot lay off employees, they cannot repeatedly hire large numbers of new recruits. In other words, once they know the right things to do, they have no way to select the right people, so they must find the right methods.

• To ensure that everyone masters the correct methods, they set up training centers right on the production lines. Learning while working and working after learning—the Japanese approach to training truly embodies the unity of knowledge and action.

Finally, let’s introduce the “training dojos” in Japanese companies—five training zones set up near the production lines for step-by-step improvement: The first zone is the Maintenance Zone, established to maintain and enhance the operational skills of front-line employees; the second is the “Earth House,” a training area dedicated to reducing waste, promoting recycling, and minimizing waste disposal on the production floor; the third is the “Perfect Quality” zone, where quality inspection skills are honed; the fourth is the “Efficiency Production Improvement House,” where employees maintain competitiveness by filming videos to identify improvement methods; the fifth is the Quality Control Room.