Page 309 - (DK) The Business Book
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DELIVERING THE GOODS 307
co-founder, Akio Morita, “The most
important mission for a Japanese
manager is to develop a healthy
relationship with his employees,
to create a familylike feeling within
We will try to create the the corporation, a feeling that Excellent companies don’t
conditions where persons employees and managers share the believe in excellence—only
could come together in a spirit same fate.” During the boom years in constant improvement
of teamwork, and exercise to Sony used the productivity and constant change.
their heart’s desire their increases made possible by kaizen Tom Peters
technological capacity. to increase output, enabling the US management writer (1942–)
Akio Morita company to branch out into
new markets.
Kaizen heads west
In the fall of 1984, following
US concerns at the growing
dominance of the Japanese car minimizing the assembly hours per
management that workers would industry, the Massachusetts car, the amount of stock held, and
have a job for life with the company. Institute of Technology (MIT) the assembly defects per 100 cars.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s undertook a five-year, $5 million The book attributed Japanese
this was the case at Sony. During research program into the global success to a process called “lean
economic downturns, when sales car industry. The study produced a production”—a vital component
fall, most companies try to protect new way of looking at production, of which was kaizen.
their profit margins by making a new buzzword, and a best-selling Managers that had read The
layoffs that are designed to cut book—The Machine That Changed Machine That Changed the World
costs. Sony rejected this approach the World, authored by James tried to incorporate the kaizen way
because it felt that laying off its Womack, Dan Jones, and Dan Roos. of thinking into their business
own workers would break the bond The study confirmed the US car model, and gradually the kaizen
of trust needed to make kaizen industry’s worst fears; Japanese car philosophy spread to North
work. According to Sony’s producers led the way in terms of America and Europe. One of the
early British adoptors was Rover.
Under the guidance of Honda, who
at the time held a 20 percent stake
in Rover, the company introduced
gemba walks at its Longbridge
factory in 1991. Under Rover’s
gemba program, managers,
supervisors, and assembly-line
workers walked along the production
line together, at least once a week,
in order to look for inefficiencies,
and to find solutions to the
problems they had identified.
Gemba walks were designed ❯❯
Discussing a problem with others is
a more effective way to come up with
solutions. Consulting people from other
parts of the business brings different
viewpoints and a wider range of options.
