Oct 29 2019
The Manga Style In The Japanese Literature On Manufacturing
A unique characteristic of the Japanese literature on manufacturing is its use of comic strips — or manga — to communicate with readers. The subject came up in a recent discussion on LinkedIn, that Mark DeLuzio started by saying:
“Toyota has been given credit for making the complex simple. Some say that this is the definition of genius. I think that the Lean consulting industry, in their attempt to help others follow Toyota’s footsteps, has in many cases done the opposite. We have made the simple very complex.”
My comment was that, while expressed in jargon, most of what goes as “Lean” in the US is simplistic. I contrast it with what I found in Japan, like the Kojo Kanri (工場管理, or “Factory Management”) monthly. It is full of case studies communicated in manga, on subjects ranging from the strategic to the tactical.
Jan 6 2020
Kei Abe, unsung Japanese genius | Hansjörg Wyss | Swiss Made
Swiss Made is a 2013 book by James Breiding and Gerhard Schwarz about the successes of Swiss companies. It came to my attention for a paragraph that celebrates the contributions of my mentor Kei Abe as a consultant to Synthes and its charismatic CEO Hansjörg Wyss. As I was with Kei Abe on several occasions at Synthes and witnessed his interactions with Wyss and with engineers, I can attest that the following quote from the book is true:
The book’s authors are journalists and had embellished the story with untrue statements that I edited out. No, Kei Abe was not a professor and never claimed to have “established the Kanban system” at Toyota. He was an aeronautics engineer from Tokyo University who went to work as a motorcycle designer for Honda, later joined the JMA and started his own consulting group, Management & Technology Japan in 1984, where I joined him in 1987.
On my last visit to Synthes, in Switzerland and without Kei, I remember pointing to a machine in a cell and telling my host “This looks like Kei’s handy work.” He confirmed that it had indeed been based on his input.
#synthes, #keiabe, #hansjoergwyss, #leanmanufacturing
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By Michel Baudin • Web scrapings • 2 • Tags: Hansjörg Wyss, Kei Abe, Lean, Synthes