Worker-Friendly Workplace

MANUFACTURING

HAMAMATSU, Japan - For years, companies aspiring to manufacturing perfection have trooped to central Japan, headquarters for Toyota Motor. But recently this city southwest of Tokyo has become a new mecca for futuristic assembly. It wasn't always so. When quality control engineer Shinichi Seki arrived at Roland D.G., a maker of high-end industrial printers, in the mid-1990s, defects were so common that returned merchandise occupied an entire room. Engineers blamed workers for being lazy or careless. But Seki wouldn't buy this.

The real culprit, he decided, were instruction manuals so complicated that only engineers could decipher them- and a workplace routine so numbingly tedious it seemed designed to manufacture failure. "People are not robots," he says. "These workers are doing jobs only human hands can do."

He radically reorganized the line so that each worker assembles an entire product herself-at her own pace. A computer screen gently guides workers through each step. Systems of carousels and sensors ensure no screw is left unturned. And so far the new system is working great. Defects are history and sales are soaring.-LUCILLE CRAFT

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Sep 2006
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