On October 8, 2017, Kobe Steel announced at a press conference that inspection data for aluminum and copper products had been falsified. Commentators wrote that trust in Japanese manufacturing had been shaken.
On March 4, 2022, Hino Motors disclosed improper engine certification for trucks and buses. A special investigation committee concluded that the cause lay in a company culture in which people could not speak up to those above them.
In the Toyota Production System, jidōka is written 自働化, not 自動化, the usual word for automation. Toyota calls it ninben no tsuita jidōka, automation with the person radical added to the character. It means automation with human wisdom added.
Toyota traces the idea to the automatic loom invented by Toyoda Sakichi. The loom did more than mechanize work once done by hand. It had a built-in device that let the machine judge good from bad. An article in the engineering news site MONOist sets the two side by side: stopping when a thread breaks, and stopping when anything is abnormal.
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.
Genbaryoku (現場力): the strength of the front line. A Japanese business training site defines it as the power to solve problems on site.
The 2018 white paper on manufacturing of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry adds that genbaryoku is not limited to the production floor. Every place where people carry out an activity can be a genba. The white paper says that this strength is thought to be akin to kaizen and suriawase.
In July 2005, a painless injection needle went on sale to hospitals in Japan. In 2000, the medical equipment maker Terumo had brought the drawing of a needle that is thick at the base and thinner toward the tip to Okano Kōgyō, a company known for its metal-pressing technology. The tip of the needle, the Nanopass 33, is 0.20 millimeters wide.
The company’s president, Okano Masayuki, was born in Sumida in 1933. The business weekly Tōyō Keizai writes that it takes at least 20 years to become a craftsman of fukashibori, deep drawing, which shapes a flat sheet of metal into a box or a tube through many steps.
In a report dated August 1, 2022, a special investigation committee described how Hino Motors had falsified engine certification data. Its summary says that developers could not speak up to say that fuel economy needed further improvement. They could not tell developers in other departments that the earlier figures had been inflated. At one development meeting, the fact that fuel economy fell far short of its target was not reported.
The news site Kuruma News summed up the problem in one phrase: ue ni mono ga ienai, unable to speak to those above.
As a plant manager, Ohno Taiichi, the architect of the Toyota Production System, was known for always carrying chalk in his pocket. When a machine did not perform as expected, he drew a circle on the floor and gave one order: Soko ni tatte mite ore. Stand there and watch.
In December 2023, Toyota chairman Toyoda Akio spoke about the certification scandal at Daihatsu. He said it came down to how employees are treated every day, and used an English phrase: “There is the phrase Bad News Fast.”
He then described what often happens to it in practice: “People are told, bring me the bad news. I was told that too, long ago. When I actually brought it, I was scolded.”
In 2024, Toyota presented its purchasing policy at an event of the Japan Auto Parts Industries Association. The aim is to buy the best goods in the world, at the lowest cost, at the right time, and chōki anteiteki ni, in a long-term and stable way. One section is titled “Mutual prosperity based on mutual trust.”
On February 1, 1997, fire broke out at Aisin Seiki’s Kariya No. 1 plant. Aisin made 80 to 90 percent of Toyota’s proportioning valves, a brake part. Toyota’s plants stopped from February 3 to 6 and returned to normal from February 7. About 70,000 vehicles were lost.
Other companies took over making the valves. According to a Ritsumeikan University paper, more than 200 suppliers are said to have taken part. Toyota sent a total of 1,200 people.