The Kanban system

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Yoshiko Nakano
Few would question Japan's superiority in manufacturing, but what is the secret of this excellence? A great many specialists from around the world, such as business managers and management researchers, have studied Japan's manufacturing to try and unearth the secret, and the same answer crops up time and time again: the strength of Japanese manufacturing lies in a unique production management system, called the Kanban system.
The Kanban system was put together by the Toyota Motor Corporation, the country's largest automobile manufacturer, currently ranked second in the whole world. Former company vice president Taiichi Ono played a central role in working out the system, which went into full use in 1962. The system has undergone various modifications and improvements since then, and even now is constantly being updated.
One man with an intimate knowledge of the Kanban system is Yoshihito Wakamatsu, who worked to spread the system at Toyota under Ono for many years. Since leaving Toyota, Wakamatsu is now a director of Culman Co. Ltd., a management consulting firm. "It takes about 30,000 components to assemble a single car," he explains. "To mass-produce something like that efficiently, you have to set up a precisely-tuned production plan, covering the supply of the necessary parts down to the smallest detail. If you can then implement a "just-in-time" system, in which the things you need are supplied when you need them and in the quantities you need, you will eliminate waste, inconsistency, and overstretching--this will increase productivity. The idea we came up with for implementing a just-in-time system like that was the Kanban system.'

The name of the Kanban system comes from the Japanese word meaning "card" and this lies at the heart of the system. A kanban is a written instruction for production, indicating mainly the component to be produced and the quantity it is to be produced in. Broadly speaking, the system consists of two processes: the product instruction kanban process, which gives directions to produce a specific number and type of parts, and the parts retrieval kanban process, which performs two functions; firstly it requests the original number and type of parts required, and secondly notifies that the required number of parts have been received. The whole assembly line is controlled by the exchange of these kanbans between processes.
To understand the system, it is important to see the difference from the conventional system, in which components manufactured at the start of the process are sent undirected to the assembly line to be used in the later stages of the manufacturing process. The Kanban systern effectively turns the conventional system round by having the later stages of the process place specific orders for the components they need--a certain component to be delivered in a certain quantity by a certain time--with the earlier, component production stage. Under the conventional system, there is a tendency for the earlier production stages to wastefully produce components in quantities greater than needed, so that unused components then accumulate at the later stages of the process. The Kanban system, in contrast, has been shown to improve such inefficiency and lead to huge increases in productivity.
"During the period of postwar reconstruction up until the end of the 1950s, goods and materials were in short supply. The refrain then was, 'if you make it, it is sure to sell,"' explains Wakamatsu. "This changed at the start of the 1960s, however, when manufacturers were expected to consider how much the finished product could be sold for. The result of this was that they were forced to conform to strict production efficiency, working out at what level of production costs they would be able to retail the product. Led by this radical shift in approach, the Kanban system was developed in order to please the end user by producing high quality goods at low prices. In this sense, the Kanban system is more than just a form of production management: I think of it as the true mindset of Japanese production, which makes every possible effort to satisfy the customer."
The Kanban system has had a tremendous impact on production systems. As well as Toyota, other domestic and foreign automobile manufacturers have introduced the system, and its application has spread to many other types of companies, such as makers of machine tools and foodstuffs, even construction and hospital management firms, in fact, anywhere requiring efficiency of management. The fact that the word "kanban" now has an entry in the internationally respected Oxford English Dictionary, which is testament to the extent to which this piece of Japanese manufacturing wisdom has become accepted around the world.
Which Japanese product did most to transform the lives of Asian people? The electric rice cooker is definitely a strong candidate. The rice cooker traditionally plays a minor role in the story of "Made in Japan" that begins with the transistor radio-the shining star of Japanese-made products in the 1950s-and leads to automobiles. walkmans and computer games. The success of these products is usually a heroic tale of Japanese men: how diligently their project team worked, how their product created a sensation in the United States, and how it enriched the Japanese economy.
But is this the only way to tell the story of "Made in Japan?" When we look at the process of globalisation not as a Japanese victory but as an interaction with the rest of the world, and not from the economic impact on Japan but from the social impact on consumers, the rice cooker emerges as a star in Asia, where 90 per cent of the world rice crop is grown amounting to 570 million tonnes.
The automatic rice cooker is one of the few home appliances developed by Asians for Asians. It was invented by Toshiba in 1955 with the aim of preparing rice easily and consistently. The compact machine relieved women from watching pots, and moved the daily routine from the kitchen to anyplace with an electrical outlet.
One of the largest global rice cooker manufacturers is Panasonic. It began to export rice cookers to Hong Kong in 1959, and has since sold more than eight million units in Hong Kong, where only seven million people live. The rice cooker was usually the first electrical appliance Hong Kong families acquired after a radio, and was a symbol of the middle-class lifestyle in the 1960s.
Why were Panasonic rice cookers so successful? The rice cooker team worked closely with their Asian agents and advisers to create what their consumers needed and desired, long before the process of "localisation" acquired its name. For example, Panasonic (then National Panasonic) released an Asian model that had a glass window in the middle of the lid as early as 1961. The original Japanese model had a solid aluminum lid, but a Hong Kong agent suggested that the glass window would help the Chinese users to open the lid du ring the cooking process and place a Cantonese sausage into the pot for extra flavor.

An age-old Japanese rice-cooking tip goes: "Never remove the lid even when your little one cries out for rice." It was beyond the Japanese engineers' imagination to install a glass in the lid so that one knew when to open it. This Asian model debuted in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand before the age of television, when most people had not seen or heard of a machine that cooked rice. But by visualizing the technology, the little window would also assure potential users around the world that the machine did, in fact, cook rice. The model soon became the de facto standard, and today it is sold in more than 45 countries and regions around the world.
When the rice cooker team found a promising market, an engineer visited the country and asked local men and women what varieties of rice were popular, how they cooked their rice, and what kind of design and colour appealed to them. They then worked with local taste advisers to make sure the dish was authentic. The interpretations of taste, design and colour were kept multiple, without forcing a Japanese interpretation. This joint approach brought out abundant energy and ideas in developing models such as a glittering silver Iranian cooker for Persian rice with its crust, a brilliant orange Hong Kong model for Cantonese congee, and a crystal pink rice cooker by a Thai designer that bakes sponge cakes.
Soft power is a convenient term to discuss the global presence of "Made in Japan." Professor Joseph Nye defines soft power as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment." In this model, 'Alade in Japan" becomes the nation's tool for persuasion in international politics. This fits well with the heroic tale of Japanese victory, but tends to overlook what kind of contributions non-Japanese have made, and how and why the international consumers incorporated the products in a particular point in time.
After all, the successful rice cookers were not just "Made in Japan," but they were also "Made in Asia." —Japan Plus

The writer is an assistant professor of the Department of Japanese Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong.