Define your business goals clearly so that others can see them as you do.
- George F. Burns
There is an order to a factory in Japan that is quite different than the order to a factory in the United States. This isn’t to suggest that one factory is better or worse than the other, but merely that things are somehow, different. As you wander around the floor of an American factory, you have a sense of territory. Walls go in and out as a precursor to the definition of spaces in which to do something. In one room, there is a process for welding. In another room, there is a process for assembly. In another room, there is a process for test. As you wander around the floor of a Japanese factory, you have a sense of wide expanses. Walls are reserved for the outside of the building and the encasements for elevator shafts. Occasionally, you’ll have a conference room that has 4 walls and a door, but just as often, the conference room will lack the walls, but still have a door. Space in a Japanese factory is organized not by the walls, but by the removable signs above that identify what the work area under the sign is, today.
The organization system in a Japanese factory is less geography and more process. I remember wandering through a factory floor in Atsugi, Japan, and was amazed that down one row of desks, there was the assembly test station for ISDN pay telephones. Down the next row of desks was the assembly test station for small fishing boat radar systems. Down the next row of desks, was the wave-soldering machine for surface mount electronics. Down the next row of desks was the catalog center and parts ordering desk. Each of these areas had its own sign indicating what was done here, at this time. My project team occupied space between a postal envelope transport system and a cash register checkout station. We were given extra space in our area because, unlike our hosts, we had no ability to squat in a crouch for hours enthralled over the intricacies of machines of our own invention.
Entering the factory was an amazing experience. We would take a bus up winding semi-mountainous roads barely wide enough for two subcompacts, in the middle of a vast sprawling city, we would top a rise on a hill, and on the left was the factory complex, while to the right, the sprawling construction of a new shopping mall. A few blocks beyond, in this rural setting, you could see the signs of noodle shops, bicycle repair shops, and the inevitable pachinko parlor where professionals would sit for hours watching ball bearings wind their way down courses of nail studded walls hoping to trap them at last in the tiny tunnels that lead to riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
Well before the pachinko parlor, we would turn left into the security gate, where the guard would politely bow and hand us, the known American engineering team, our badges of the day. We would the wind our way past the main visitor center into the back lot past the vending machines, the bicycle parking area, and the inevitable company cafeteria where the smells of lunch were already wafting through the air in the seaweed noodle and pork aromas of a Japanese work morning. Finally, we’d enter the overhead partitions of a loading dock which would enter into the massive 4-football field sized four-story factory building #42 where we had our 250 square foot work area buried half way down the corridors on the main floor. If we arrived early enough, we could watch the ritual team building exercise program of the workers doing the morning stretch to the sounds of an obnoxious military march and a woman chanting endlessly in the background “ichi ni san shi” over and over again the “one two three four” of the morning calisthenics. If we arrived later, we would be the cause for a spontaneous break while someone would offer us some green tea from a massive urn or a cup of instant coffee made from a jar of the most obnoxious nestle coffee ever conceived on this earth (a failed product of the failed Dutch conquest of the world). This would then be followed by the inevitable cigarette break where everyone would troop over to the green tea urn where the 10 square foot smoking zone was maintained. Then, we could, ritual greeting of caffeine and nicotine over, actually attempt to begin the day, some 4 hours later than those who had greeted us.
The workday would then commence, with plenty of time for lunch, green tea breaks, all the rancid tobacco you could inhale, and finally the recap at the end of the day. The famous recap, where, if things went well, you’d suck down a Styrofoam cup of raman noodles and put in a few extra voluntary hours before heading home at 9 or 10 p.m. Or, if things were going badly, our boss would pull up a few company limos and waft us all to some fine restaurant to discuss the obvious problems that we were having that day, or week, or lifetime. Sometimes, we would look forward to that series of problems that would drive everyone up the wall, for that would be the only time for sure where we could guarantee a good meal and a bed time before midnight. However, these fine meals would have their own tension, for if we didn’t deliver a solution after reaching agreement over far too many glasses of sake and the inevitable 5th of foul Suntory whisky, we’d have to go out again and again until we solved the problem, or our livers melted into a pool of grayish brown sludge, or the project came to a sudden halt when the guard at the factory gate failed to recognize us and called the local cops rather than handing us our admission badges.
But if things went well, we could show our joy at our success by coming in on Saturday, or perhaps even Sunday to make sure that we had tested everything and that it really did work. Of course, we would not be alone, for all the other people whose projects were going well would be there to greet us with green tea, nestle coffee and the unbelievably bad mild seven (mildo sevenu) cigarettes reconstituted from the factory sweepings of building #41 just down the road. Then we would join a small party of happy victors showing off the intricacies of our systems to our co-workers, keeping our shouting down of course in case the poor souls with problem systems down the aisle might be distracted by our revelry. This being a day off, we would leave early, say 4 or 5 p.m.
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