Japan’s Amazing “Just in Time” System Only Half of Story

TOKYO – Businessmen worldwide are now familiar with the Japanese word kanban (kahn-bahn), which refers to a manufacturing system that helps eliminate waste, reduces cost, and ensures a higher level of quality than was previously possible in manufacturing processes.

What most of these business people are unaware of, however, is that the kanban process, pioneered by the predecessor of Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyoda Automatic Loom Works), was (and still is) only half of the equation that made it possible for Japanese manufacturers to surpass their American and European counterparts in both productivity and quality from around 1960 and on.

Kanban itself means a signboard, a billboard or poster, which the general manager of the Toyoda Loom Works began using (back in the early1930s) to list the parts needed on a minute-to-minute basis as products moved down an assembly line. This made it possible for suppliers to deliver the needed parts “just-in-time” to the assembly line workers.

In 1933 Toyoda Loom Works created an automobile division, spinning it off as an independent company, Toyota Motor Corporation, in 1937. [The difference in the name of the new company was an error in the choice of ideograms made by the person who registered the company.]

The kanban system, which had been significantly improved since first being introduced, became an integral part of Toyota Motor Corporation’s manufacturing process.

Toyota describes the kanban system as an “information carrying device” and “a tool” for implementing the “pull” system of production, which puts parts on the line where they are needed, and immediately replaces the ones that are used.

Each kanban with its list of parts moves along the assembly line with the parts, so they reach the right place at exactly the right time.

The first successful post-World War II kanban aided automobile made by Toyota was the Toyopet Crown, introduced in 1955, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

But again it was not just the “just-in-time” system of delivering parts and information when and where they were actually needed that made Toyota, and subsequently hundreds of other Japanese corporations, so successful so quickly.

The other half of this equation, also created and spread by Toyota, was the principle and process of jidoka (jee-dohh-kah). Jido (jee-dohh) means “automatic, automatic motion, self-moving.” Ka (kah) refers to something that is good, right, approved.

As used by Toyota, jidoka refers to building into automation the ability to detect and stop a malfunction (in the manufacturing process) before it occurs, and it was this technology that dramatically improved the ability of Japanese manufacturers to build products faster and cheaper and better in quality than foreign manufacturers.

The goal of jidoka is to prevent all defects, thereby ensuring that 100 percent quality is built into all products. When this process is coupled with the Japanese principle of kaizen (kigh-zen) or “continuous improvement,” which has long been an integral part of the Japanese mind-set, it gives the Japanese a winning combination.

Not surprisingly, Korean manufacturers such as Samsung owe much of their own success to having integrated these two principles into their business culture. Chinese manufacturers are now striving to reach this stage -- and they will get there, probably sooner than anyone expects.

It goes without saying (to use an old Japanese saying) that foreign manufacturers that have not yet picked up on the concept and use of jidoka, as well as kaizen, are at a serious disadvantage, and may end up on the dust heap of history.

[Recommended reading: The Toyota Way – 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer, by Jeffrey K. Liker. Published by McGraw-Hill.]

Copyright © 2007 by Boye Lafayette De Mente
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Boye Lafayette De Mente has been involved with Japan, Korea, China and Mexico since the late 1940s as a member of a U.S. intelligence agency, student, journalist, and editor. He is the author of more than 50 books on these countries, including the first books ever on the Japanese way of doing business: Japanese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, first published in 1959, and How to Do Business in Japan, published in 1961.

To see a complete list of his titles [each one linked to Amazon.com’s buy page], go to his personal website: http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.