In December 2025, the Japan Productivity Center published its international comparison of labor productivity. In 2024, Japan ranked 28th of the 38 OECD countries in productivity per hour worked. Per worker, it ranked 29th, as in 2023, and remained the lowest of the G7 countries.
Monozukuri White Paper
Article 8 of Japan’s Basic Act on the Promotion of Core Manufacturing Technology, passed in 1999, requires the government to report to the Diet every year on what it has done to promote monozukuri kiban gijutsu, core manufacturing technology. Monozukuri means the making of things. Three ministries write the report together: economy, trade and industry, health, labor and welfare, and education. The cabinet approved the latest edition on May 29, 2026.
God Excel
Kami Ekuseru, god Excel, is the name for spreadsheets made to be printed on paper. The IT site @IT defines it as an Excel file made on the premise of printing, with merged cells and ruled lines used to the full and appearance put first. ITmedia describes files in which cells form a grid like graph paper, with one character in each cell.
In December 2020, Mynavi News reported that Kōno Tarō, then minister for administrative reform, had posted on Twitter draft rules for data that machines can read. Two of them were “as a rule, one item of data per cell” and “do not merge cells needlessly.”
The Deming Prize
In 1951, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers created the Deming Prize, an award for people and companies that have contributed to quality control. It honors W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician who came to Japan in 1950 and 1951 to teach quality control.
In a chapter posted on the union’s website, the quality pioneer Ishikawa Kaoru writes that Deming gave the royalties from the record of his lectures to the union’s managing director, Koyanagi Ken’ichi. The union then announced the prize.
Monozukuri Nippon Grand Award
Since 2005, the Japanese government has presented the Monozukuri Nippon taishō, the Monozukuri Nippon Grand Award, every two years. Monozukuri means the making of things. The award honors seizō seisan genba no chūkaku o ninatte iru chūken jinzai, mid-career people who form the core of the manufacturing and production floor. It also honors the skilled people who have upheld traditional and cultural skills.
The Vocabulary of Improvement
Kaizen (改善): improvement. The Daijisen dictionary defines it as correcting what is bad and making it better. It adds that the word is known around the world as a symbol of Toyota’s production system.
Yokoten (横展開): horizontal deployment. A business glossary defines it as taking a case that succeeded in one department or business, with the know-how and technology gained from it, and applying it to other departments or fields.
Five S
Many Japanese workplaces use 5S, five words that begin with the letter s in Japanese: seiri, seiton, seisō, seiketsu and shitsuke.
A Japanese business glossary defines them in turn. Seiri is separating what is needed from what is not, and getting rid of what is not. Seiton is deciding where and how each thing is kept, so that it is easy to use. Seisō is cleaning, so that work can begin at once. Seiketsu is keeping the first three in place. Shitsuke is making the habit stick.
Lesson Study
In many Japanese schools, teachers improve their lessons together. A teacher plans a lesson with colleagues from the same grade or subject. The lesson is then taught as a kenkyū jugyō, a research lesson, while all the teachers of the school, or those of one grade or subject, watch.
Afterwards, the observers discuss it, in groups or all together. A paper from the National Institute for Educational Policy Research notes that this lesson study is voluntary training and demands a great deal of work.
Creative Ideas at Toyota
In 1951, Toyota began an activity in which employees submit creative ideas for improvement. Today it is called the sōi kufū teian seido, the creative idea suggestion system. In March 1953, Toyota adopted the company slogan Yoi shina, yoi kangae, good products, good ideas.
The cumulative number of suggestions passed one million in 1974, ten million in 1984 and forty million in 2011.
Quality Circles
In April 1962, the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers launched a magazine for the factory floor, Genba to QC. In its first issue, Ishikawa Kaoru introduced the QC circle, a small group in one workplace that carries out quality control on its own initiative.
The definition describes managing and improving the workplace continuously, with everyone taking part.