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2017.12.28
Chatting at work is important 5 I have written that chatting with common theme on shop-floor is important.
This time I want to tell you the image of this activity.
This is the logo picture of my company and it tells the feeling.
A young leader Kaizen-kun is standing in front of the group and the other people of the company are supporting him. The person on the right is the president, on the left is me.
Please do Kaizen like this. It must be enjoyable, and you will get a super result.
I wish you a happy new year!
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2017.12.21
Chatting at work is important 4 I said that chatting with common theme is important. We have various types of chatting other than the chatting on shop-floor in front of the products. I think “brain storming” is one of the chatting technique.
The rule is very simple. There are only two rules. One is to get as many ideas as possible about the target theme. To be correct or to be logical are not necessary. I always ask you to get 100 ideas at least. And the other one is not to deny the ideas however strange they are.
Although I ask you to get 100 ideas, it is often the case you stop getting ideas before 30. Thirty ideas show only ordinary ideas which you are feeling daily. If you need to reach a new level idea, you have to try to get 100 by using your brain fully.
Previously I did a brain storming work-shop with the sales managers and the maintenance managers of a car dealer, the theme of which was “More visitors to the dealer”
They tried to get many ideas but stopped after 30 ideas. I tried to pull ideas from them but they couldn’t.
But after a while one of them raise an idea “Give candies to visitors”. I wrote down on the white board. Then the next manager “Give chocolate to visitors”. Then “Rice cookies” continued…
I thought this is not a correct way but denying is against the brainstorming rule, I kept writing these new ideas on the white board.
These snack ideas were finished after the managers made 30 of those. I thought they may stop again. But miracle happened. Managers’ brains were really stormed, and they got 100 ideas finally.
At the next step, they started discussion who eats candies? who eats chocolates? who eats rice cookies? By discussing the difference, they found there are a lot more visitor groups than they assumed, as “a couple visitor with kids”, “a couple visitor with their parents” etc.
Finally, they got many new ideas like making kid play space which was very unique then and after implementing these ideas, visitors to the dealer increased and their sales rose and reached the target.
Chatting between various people with common target really works.
I write down your ideas on board.
Tell me many ones.
Give Sachertorte. Sache….
Give Osenbei. Ose….
Give Croissant.
You are giving difficult snacks
intentionally don’t you?
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2017.12.15
Chatting at work is important 3 I think Genba Kaizen has two types. ( Genba : on site)
One is the Genba Kaizen to solve the problem which has already occurred. The other is the Genba Kaizen which realizes advanced level for the future management.
Of course both of them are important and good.
But we have to know the difference between the two. I found the most of the Genba Kaizen being done on site is the former one solving the occurred problem. This is the Kaizen which keeps the current level and not enough to keep up with the changing world. We need to know there is the other step Kaizen for the future.
What are the Kaizen for the future for example?
In Japan, the birthrate is decreasing, and the average age is going up. This clearly means we run short of workers. Therefore, we have to improve the labor productivity at least by 30%.
And in every aspect the speed is becoming faster and faster as Amazon deliver books within the day of order. What is needed in this era is shortening lead-time by 50%.
If we try to do these big Kaizen, it is almost impossible to do all by the people on site. We need to do the Kaizen by all the people in the company by chatting on Genba or on site.
Somebody may say, “Can you be responsible if we fail?”, “It is too difficult and impossible for us!”. But to find the impossible reasons brings us nothing. In order to survive in this changing world, we need to go to the advanced stage.
If you decide to challenge, you need to be ready to feel big pain.
But please don’t worry, the pain is not from unknown disease. It is the muscular pain after training.
If you are challenging to win the Olympic games, the training level is very high and you feel big pain but you can also gain big reward.
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2017.12.11
Chatting at work is important 2 In the comics of the episode 18, there was a pleasant chatting. But I do not think that kind of chatting leads good Kaizen, either.
Then how is the chatting which helps good Kaizen? There are some important points.
First, the objects of Kaizen should be visible. Therefore, most of the time I stay in the place where real Kaizen is done because everything there is visible.
Second, the theme of Kaizen is shared by all the people there. When I am there I always point the object and the theme is shared.
And there should be various many people as it is a Kaizen assembly. There are the president, directors, managers, staff people, part-timers, sales people, designers, operators etc. These days I often hear the word “diversity” and I think this is it.
Every product in a plant has a lot of relations to all the people there. Sales people took the order of it, purchase people bought the material, engineers made the machine layout, controllers made the production plan, production people made it, inspectors checked it and drivers transported it. They are separated from each other but are related to each other.
If these people get together in front of a product and start chatting for example about shortening the lead-time, often the case super ideas comes out that can never be created by one self.
This is the chat I want to do.
When we do this chat and get good ideas, many attendants get very surprised and say, “this is an unique good assembly”. Yes, this kind of assembly is not done usually. In case of a big problem happening, this kind of assembly may be made but what I want is the assembly done in daily life in order to be good.
Let’s start chatting with many company people to do Kaizen!
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2017.12.05
I went to the Gunkan-jima or the Warship island, too. Last time, I wrote that I went to a “robot hotel”. And the next day I went to the Gunkan-jima or the Warship island in Nagasaki prefecture. The Gunkan-jima is a common name of the Hashima and it is called so because of its outlook.
Why the island became warship shape? Because this island was a base place for mining coal till 1974 since Meiji era, and many buildings were built for the workers who went down into the bottom of the sea to mine the coal and their family. The buildings were apartment houses, shops, schools, hospitals etc. and they made the warship-shape of the island.
The size of the island is 480m×160m, very small! But in1960, there, more than 5000 people were living and that makes 83600 heads/㎢.(No.1 in the world!)
In 1941, more than 410 thousand tons of good coal was produced, which supported the development of Japan. But after 1960, the major energy was shifted from coal to oil and the coal became less and less required and the island mining area was closed in 1974 to make the island unpopulated.
Recently the island became partly open to the visitors and I visited and found it totally ruin.
In the year 1974, I graduated from university and started working. I do not feel it so long ago. And I knew the word “energy conversion” but it was a knowledge of historical word. It was the first experience for me to see the real thing by myself. I really understand the fact that the world is always changing.
Not only the shift from coal to oil, but also from analog to digital, from gas engine to electric engine, from manned driving to unmanned driving, from electronic calculator to artificial intelligence, the world is drastically changing.
I strongly feel the importance to change our manufacturing too.