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pravasichhokro · 4 years ago

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Productivity and Quality- The Japanese Way

During engineering college days and first few years of working in engineering companies in India, I always felt that productivity could only be improved at the cost quality-inversely proportional.

This perception changed once I got a chance to know the Japanese people and experience the Japanese industries –small and big. I started this journey in 1975 while working in Engineers India Ltd. in New Delhi where a Japanese coordinator was stationed for a manmade fiber project in Baroda.

Later I executed a big EPC project for NFL, Guna in India with Japanese partners. The final change came when I lived in Japan with my family and worked at Japanese EPC company for fertilizer projects in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh.

I will start from small scale. The chopsticks are extensively used in Japan and they are made by cottage industry for day to day use. A one man set up with two simple machines do the job. The tree truck (soft wood, probably imported from Indonesia) is cut on a saw for the exact length of chopstick. Another machine removes the hard bark and then the truck is sliced to a thickness required for the chopsticks. A rotary wheel with knives cuts the sliced “wooden flat” into 100 percent cut and 90 percent cut alternately. Chopsticks are ready for packing and shipment. High productivity and quality was assured.

Another instance was the use of technology in a restaurant (then there was no internet). The menu gives the list of items with a number, picture of the dish and price. The waitress used to take the order from us and punched the information in handheld device. The information would go to the kitchen and cashier instantly. This helped any waitress to bring the dishes to our table. Also, when we go out to the cashier, he produced the bill instantly. Even today I do not see similar set up in India. Again, high productivity and quality.

We used to go out to fun fete (mela) on some local festivals in Japan. One such fun fete was held in an old/dead volcano crater. It was like a football field with stalls (mainly food and kid stuff) on the rim and the playground or games in the trough. The Japanese cookie (outer cover would be wheat or rice flour and center would have sweet potato based sweet) are extremely popular at such places. The set up was a conveyor belt with molds (two halves) mounted on it. There were two stations- one to pour the dough or wheat/rice flour in both molds and another to place the sweet ball in one of the two halves. The molds would close after the two stations and go through an LPG fired furnace/tunnel. Once cooked the molds open up to discharge the cookie. One got fresh cookies all the time. Only one person to man it all. The area was less than 8 ft by 10 ft and conveyor length app 12 -15 ft. High productivity and quality. I have yet to see such arrangements for, say, batata wada or Samosa or laddu in India.

Japan and its auto sector was world famous for assembly lines and our visit to Nissan factory in 1992 reinforced the popular belief. The assembly line started with plain sheet metal stack. First activity on the line was to make the shell from sheets by pressing, cutting and welding by robots. The shell then was subjected to a 24 hour cycle of primer coating, furnace/oven setting and two more coats to reach the final colour. This shell was the base to assemble the car. In next 16 hours, the shell gets all its accessories and the engine fixed as it moves on a conveyor. The unbelievable actions were the supplies would come from both sides of the line and each work station had an LCD display to instruct the worker what to do. The worker could stop the line from moving if any hurdle is faced at a work station like no supply or missed fixing. Also the line had different car models and different colours being assembled one after the other. For example first could be a Nissan Sunny red with right hand drive and next could be a black left hand drive Nissan Micra. The assembled car would be tested on idle rollers and then driven to a waiting ship less than 500 ft from end of the conveyor for export. Once again high productivity and quality.

I had been associated with refractory procurement including inspection at factories in Burnpur/Asansol area and ACC, Katani, MP. All of these made bricks required for heaters in fertilizer and refinery by the traditional way-using wooden molds and firing in a heap or igloo kind of dome from within. Most fired using coal but ACC used producer gas. The brinks were having different shade (due to uneven firing) and the corners/edges were broken. I went to a refractory manufacturer in Japan and was awe struck with the automation. There were three silos with raw materials and the computer controlled ratio delivered the basic mix in a trough. The mixture was turned around with addition of water and the wet mix was dropped on a conveyor carrying the steel molds. The molds were removed, and the bricks (larger than the final size) would go through an LPG fired tunnel/furnace. The fired bricks were cut to shape and inspected for release to packaging and shipping at the end of conveyor. The conveyor was more than 300 ft long. The result was almost no edge or corners were broken and the colour was uniform. All these operations were managed by 30 people producing 30000 bricks per shift. Japanese brick was priced Rs. 10/each but ACC brick Rs.25/each. Once again high productivity and quality.

I strongly believe that Japanese people understood and followed the saying “it takes same time and efforts to make a bad/defective job as it takes to make it defects-free”. We need to cultivate such attitude in Indian workforce.

PS: Some readers may find the above a lot more technical than they can digest. All I can say is ‘please bear with me”.

#productivity #japanese way

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