Greetings from the Operative Services team here in Japan. After two days in Nagoya, we traveled south, arriving in Fukuoka late Sunday evening, where the rain greeted us again. We spent all day Monday in classes learning about Kaizen from our four senseis. We studied just in time, standardized work, kanban systems and flow of materials and information.

“Although we have been working on many of these concepts already, we are learning that we have just scratched the surface of our leanings and the importance of constantly building “iterations” on the work we have already started,” says Cheryl Tada.

Monday ended with a traditional Japanese dinner where some of us were found to be more adventuresome than others.

“The culture and people have made us feel very comfortable. We are learning the Japanese way and trying not to disturb the “wa” (harmony),” says Eli White.

Even with limited Japanese language skills, we have been able to find our way (mostly), order food and understand the flow of work in the factories. The use of visual cues is everywhere along with a service culture that is unmatched. We have seen airline workers and immigration officials running in the airport terminals to assist passengers. Hard to believe for those accustomed to air travel these day perhaps, but true!

Another example of service excellence was provided on our last night in Fukuoka when a group of us set out to find the famed street-side food stalls located downtown. We must have looked a little lost as we were spontaneously adopted by a local businessman who took time to detour from his trip home and escort us to our destination.

The past two days we spent going to “Gemba” at Showa Manufacturing. They specialize in various heating and air conditioning equipment and have been practicing Kaizen (lean) for over 20 years. Judy Dougherty “saw standard work in action that clearly allowed the worker time to be creative and to continually improve the process. Furthermore, intuitive layouts supported the training of new workers.”

Sean Flack was “surprised by the craftsmanship and variety of custom work evident in a factory setting.” Clearly, manufacturing environments have more in common with our workplace than we might intuitively expect.

As Ti Refvem commented “many ideas can be taken from the factory floor and used in our setting. The factory workers use a combination of manual techniques and high-tech machinery to service our customer. We also do this in health care”.

Today we traveled an hour by bus to two car manufacturing plants. We first visited the Nissan plant in Kyushu where we were left speechless by the extensive use of robots to perform many tasks. Who would have thought that we would be reminded of ballets and waltzes while watching these machines perform their work?

Then we were privileged to travel into the hills outside town to the Toyota plant where Lexus and Highlander models are made. Again, we were awed by the synchronous work of man and machine. As Jeremy Guideschek observed, “it’s all about the flow”. Unlike Nissan however, Toyota has clearly chosen to rely less on robots, and with careful thought provides a safe and supportive environment that promotes worker excellence.

Thanks for reading our blog and we look forward to reporting to you all in person on our return to Seattle.

The Operative Services Team