Khamnam’s Diary

PART-1

Everyone knows Japan is very much developed and also a ruling nation in the business of production. There are many world class car makers and other manufacturing industries in Japan. I have been given a chance to learn the Japanese ideology of production and their production techniques. Therefore, I came to Japan for a year to learn the production technology their concept of continuous improvement.

Improvement is simple but continuous improvement is a big challenge. Everyone can make improvement at some point of time but maintaining the continuous improvement is a very difficult job. But Japanese people are emphasizing towards the continuous improvement and not the simple improvements.

When an individual is asked to make some improvement in the system, he will always first check the most complex point thinking that it won’t be an easy task but most of the improvements come from very simple points. So, one should always welcome the craziest and the simple ideas (respect other ideas) because most of the big achievements come from those simple or crazy or out of the blue kind of ideas.

Japanese Production Metholody

Few years ago, the economy of Japan was following a climb up path and that was the time when Japanese people implemented their real production techniques and methods. Now there is a slight decline in the economy of the Japan and now they are again trying to implement the old production techniques and methods. In the next few paragraphs, I am sharing very few ideas of Japanese great companies like Toyota, Suzuki and other production companies about Work and Improvement in the field of production.

What is work according to Japanese Production Ideology?

Work consists of three different parts:

1. Wasteful Work (Muda)
2. Auxiliary Work (Work that has no added value in the current work condition but must be carried out) and
3. Net Work (Work that upgrades the added values of a thing)

Muda (Wasteful work) pushes up the cost of an enterprise and contributing nothing good. And the valuable work must have the following characteristics:

1. Problem consciousness is high
2. Wastes can be detected
3. Thinking for problem solving
4. Preparation of a Kaizen suggestion
5. Implementation of Kaizen
6. Sense of Achievement of Kaizen

N.B. - Kaizen (Continuous improvement - the innovative effort to create new things)

In the next publication, I will talk about Kaizen which is the heart of the Japanese production Technology and which is the main reason for which Japanese companies are successful in most of the production works.