Jikōtei kanketsu (自工程完結): completing one’s own process. At a 2017 quality forum, a Toyota speaker explained the term. It began as the idea of making things without letting defects arise in the production process. The speaker also named a goal: that workers can feel their work helps the customer and the people in the next process, the atokōtei.
manufacturing
Proposals from Suppliers
Japanese manufacturers have long asked the suppliers they already trade with for VE and VA proposals, the engineering magazine Monoist writes. Toyota defines VE as cost reduction that removes unneeded functions and reaches into design and production methods.
Toyota Takes On the Costs
In July 2022, Kumakura Kazuo, Toyota’s head of purchasing, gave an online briefing on the company’s dealings with its suppliers. Toyota would cover the usual changes in material costs that follow the market. It would also consider bearing its suppliers’ energy costs, which had not been covered before.
1,145 Suppliers
On October 18, 1999, Nissan, led by Carlos Ghosn, announced the Nissan Revival Plan. The company said that it would reduce its 1,145 suppliers of parts and materials to 600 or fewer by fiscal 2002. It also said that it held shares in 1,394 companies and would move to sell them, on grounds of cost and benefit, to raise cash.
Nissan presented these cuts as steps to revive the company.
Under the Lacquer
Making Wajima-nuri, the lacquerware of Wajima in Ishikawa Prefecture, takes about 124 steps, divided among specialized craftspeople.
Before the lacquer, the weak parts of the wooden body, such as the thin rims of bowls and plates, are reinforced with cloth. This is nunokise. The base coat mixes lacquer with ji no ko, a diatomaceous earth that is Wajima’s own. Only then come the middle and top coats and the decoration.
Mirror Polish
Grand Seiko polishes the cases of its watches with zaratsu kenma, Zaratsu polishing. The company explains that the surfaces are polished into a smooth mirror without distortion, and that the edges where flat and angled surfaces meet are made sharp. Its design principles say that each surface should, as a rule, be a mirror, with as little distortion as possible.
A craftsman profiled on Seiko’s site says that an error of a single micron ruins the surface.
Maneshita Denki
Matsushita Electric, the company of Matsushita Kōnosuke, developed products by studying existing ones. A research paper by Fukunishi Takeshi, published on a site devoted to Matsushita Kōnosuke, describes the method of its engineer Nakao Tetsujirō. He took existing products apart, examined each part and built new products from what he learned.
The paper says that the method was later mocked as Maneshita Denki. The nickname changes one sound in Matsushita to make maneshita, copied.
Kei Cars
A kei jidōsha, light car, may be no more than 3.4 meters long, 1.48 meters wide and 2.0 meters high, with an engine of no more than 660 cc. The class is defined under the Road Transport Vehicle Act. The 660 cc limit dates from 1990. The present length and width took effect in October 1998.
Inside that box, Honda built the N-BOX around its cabin. In a Honda magazine interview, the chief developer of the first N-BOX describes the task: Shitsunai o hiroku suru tame ni, enjin rūmu o chiisaku shinagara, dō yatte kūkan o kakuho suru ka. “To make the cabin wide, how do we secure space while making the engine room smaller?”
Passport Size
In 1989, Sony released the Handycam CCD-TR55. Sony’s history of the Handycam describes it as small and light, pasupōto saizu, passport size, and gives its weight as 790 grams. It won the Good Design Grand Prize of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Pocketable
Sony’s TR-63 transistor radio went on sale in 1957. It measured 112 by 71 by 32 millimeters, which Sony describes as the smallest in the world at the time. Sony says its compact size gave rise to a new word, pokettaburu, pocketable. It was also Sony’s first full-scale export model.