The delegation had breakfast in the hotel, and then took a bus to a car manufacturing plant in a prefecture outside Tokyo.
While the bus was driving through Tokyo, we were all observing this strange city.
The first impression this city gives people is that of crowds: there are surging crowds of people everywhere.
The second feeling is order: it is rare to see people jaywalking on the road, and the traffic flow on the road is also very orderly.
The third feeling is cleanliness: even though we are in the car at the moment, we can still feel that this city is spotless, fresh and charming.
The area of this factory is not particularly large, but it is undoubtedly a world-class large-scale enterprise. The first impression you get after entering is that it is clean, and everything here is so orderly.
While we were visiting, Tanaka explained to us the basic situation here, especially their management philosophy. The main management idea is to eliminate waste and achieve continuous improvement by mobilizing the collective wisdom of employees. Then we visited two workshops:
Welding and assembly.
Although I have visited many factories before, including our Sino-Japanese joint venture in Shangjiang, what I saw today really shocked me. What shocked me was not its highly automated robots and advanced
Instead of electronic equipment, a team of employees can continue to improve while working with high-intensity repetitive actions.
Advanced equipment and robots can be easily introduced, but it is not easy to use the wisdom of employees to make better use of these equipment. My first impression of the workshop site in front of me is that it is clear at a glance, the visualization is very strong, and there are many equipment and robots.
, it is very crowded, but very orderly. The employees are busy working nervously. Just looking at the appearance, it seems that the employees are very coordinated with each other.
For example, the assembly parts around employees are just enough for one vehicle, and the operating tools can be easily taken and put away after use, saving waiting time and unnecessary steps in operation; after assembly, they are placed on the transport vehicle and flowed to
In the next process, the transport vehicle is actually an ordinary shelf, but there is a braking device below. The special track arranged in advance and level with the ground can drive the shelf forward, thus eliminating the need for people to carry it, and
The braking device can be automatically separated from the frame.
In this way, one braking device can drive multiple racks forward, saving unnecessary waste; before each braking device is uploaded to the next process, employees will adjust the direction of the component in advance, and the next process can be operated directly;
To transport boxes containing smaller parts, the shelves have sloped pulley rows, which allow employees to get the boxes directly. After loading the parts, they can slide the boxes to the other end, eliminating unnecessary transportation in the middle.
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Robot welding also eliminates waste as much as possible. In terms of the process, parts on one vehicle are welded into a whole piece, and parts with the same welding parameters are arranged in order and welded in order, thereby reducing the waste of robots changing welding guns; the entire vehicle is assembled and welded
, multiple robots are welding at the same time. After welding a part, each robot will automatically change to the corresponding welding gun according to the thickness of the car body metal according to the pre-set program and weld again. This can save the waste of buying multiple robots.
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You can feel the power of Kanban everywhere in the entire workshop, such as "Production Progress Management Board", "Safety Production Kanban", "Quality Abnormality Kanban", etc. When employees operate, each employee will have a "Production Instruction Sheet" with a "Production Instruction Sheet" on it.
It will indicate which work station, what to install, what color, and what the serial number is, and employees will be clearly prompted to operate.
For the assembly of key components such as the engine, an electronic display screen is used to remind the operator through weight measurement that there are still several pieces that have not been installed. Only when the number on the display screen reaches zero will the engine's transmission device be started and enter the next process.
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In some processes, one employee controls the welding of multiple workstations at the same time, and the display screen will prompt which workstation should operate which parts; music is often heard playing in the workshop, which is music to indicate that there is a problem at a certain workstation.
All the signboards in the workshop are completed by the team themselves. During the entire production process in the workshop, there is no quality inspector. Only the finished products need to be inspected by quality inspectors for compliance with regulations. The problem during the production process is the operators themselves.
Discovered and improved. But what is incredible to me is that such a team does not have the rewards and penalties that I often see and use.
In one area of the workshop, I saw several computer monitors, and there were some different simulation props in front of each monitor. After Tanaka’s explanation, I learned that it turned out that those were for employees to proficiency and evaluation, and those
The props are consistent with the actual operation steps. What is displayed on the screen is an operator issuing a challenge: Can you go faster than me?
In the workshop, I also saw many flowcharts made into animations. We all wondered: Is that to make employees happy? Tanaka’s answer was beyond our expectations: It was during school holidays.
The children who visit here will like to see it and it is specially made for them! It can be seen that this company has tapped into the needs of others to the point of ubiquity.
At noon, a group of us ate in the factory canteen. The purpose of this arrangement by the Japanese was to give us the opportunity to communicate with the factory workers at close range. However, the language barrier still caused difficulties in this communication.
Difficult, after all, having an interpreter in the middle will change the atmosphere of communication. The best communication should be a casual conversation, but with an interpreter, it becomes too formal.
However, from these simple exchanges, I still felt the tremendous pressure faced by these workers. I heard people say before that Japanese people like to drink at night, and the suicide rate in this country is also the highest. I think all this is due to the huge
Due to the pressure.
The rejuvenation of any nation has to pay a huge price. This is my understanding of this issue.
In the afternoon we visited the Toyota showroom. Toyota is one of the most famous car brands in Japan. I think the most valuable thing about Tanaka and others is this "face-less" mutual learning spirit. If in our country, let a company
It is a very incredible thing to take a delegation to visit another company.
The Toyota Industrial and Technology Pavilion, with a total area of more than 10,000 square meters, is the company's first production plant. The pavilion is mainly divided into two parts: the fiber machinery pavilion and the automotive pavilion. The theme is "research and creation." I noticed that the old
The 1953 Toyota slogan "Excellent Quality, Innovative Thinking" still hangs in the factory.
The staff in the museum demonstrated the production process of automobile parts on-site. A piece of steel material was heated to a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius for thirty-eight seconds, and then was quickly forged into automobile parts. (To be continued)