Toyota is excellent with their standard work. They use a series of worksheets to simplify the creation of these standards. These are sometimes also know as the “famous 3 slips”. The first one is a production capacity sheet to define what capacity you have available. The second one is a standard work combination table to define when the operator is doing what. The third one is a standard work layout sheet to help with the layout and arrangement of the machines. While there are many different ways of doing this, I like the Toyota approach. Since this is a larger topic, I’ve broken it into multiple blog posts. Lets start with the Production Capacity sheet.
Shopfloor
Disabled Employees in Manufacturing – Omron Taiyo in Japan – Part 2
In my last post, I started to describe the factory tour at Omron Taiyo, where more than half of the employees are disabled. This post continues this interesting tour, also looks into the financial situation of their employees, and gives some suggestions for other companies.
Disabled Employees in Manufacturing – Omron Taiyo in Japan – Part 1
In every country, a part of the population has temporary or permanent disabilities that handicap their working ability. While in Japan, I was able to visit two factories of Omron Taiyo, in Kyoto and Beppu, where the majority of the employees have a disability. This was quite an enlightening experience for me, and I would like to share it with you. Due to the length of this post, I have split it into two parts.
The Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive – Subaru
Subaru is the smallest of the Japanese car makers, with barely a million vehicles per year in 2016, which makes it the 23rd-largest vehicle maker in the world. Yet, since it produces almost exclusively four-wheel-drives, it is also the largest maker of four-wheel-drives. Despite its small size Subaru is highly profitable. During my grand tour of Japanese automotive, I visited Subaru in February 2018. Here are my findings.
The Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive – Suzuki
The next stop on my Grand Tour of the Japanese Automotive Plants: Suzuki! On December 3, 2017, I visited their location in Hamamatsu. To be completely honest, I did not see the inside of their plants, but the excellent Suzuki Plaza still gave a lot of insight into their production system.
The Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive – Mazda
Mazda is the seventeenth-largest car maker in the world with around 1.5 million cars produced in 2016. Most of them were produced in Japan. It is also the only car maker that mass-produced cars using a rotary engine. As part of my Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive Plants, I visited their main Hiroshima plant in January 2018 (one of three Mazda plants in Japan). Here’s what I found:
The Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive – Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi Motors is the oldest of the major car companies in Japan, established 1917. It is also one of the smaller ones in Japan, with only slightly more than 1 million vehicles produced in 2016. In January 2018, I had the chance to visit their Okazaki plant near Nagoya. I also visited the Mitsubishi Fuso plant in Kawasaki and one of its suppliers, although that is technically another company. Let me give you the gist of the Mitsubishi Motors Plant Okazaki.
The Grand Tour of Japanese Automotive – Honda Kumamoto
Honda is the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world with around 17 million motorcycles sold in 2017 (compared to number 2 Yamaha with around 5.2 million, 2015 figures). In January 2018 I had a chance to visit their Honda Kumamoto plant. This plant gave me a much better and very different impression than the Honda Sayama automotive plant.