In November 2013 two staff from Lion’s brewing operations joined us on our Lean Japan Tour, and on their return kindly agreed to host a brewery tour at their Castlemaine Perkins Brewery this February for our clients in South East Queensland and local members of the Australian Industry Group. Lion is well-known in Australia as a leading beverage and food company employing 7,500 staff.
On the afternoon of the 3rd of February 2014, 38 leaders of South Australian industry gathered in Lonsdale for a factory tour of Redarc Electronics. The event was one of four organised in Australia in early 2014 by Shinka Management, with the Redarc tour held with the support of the Australian Industry Group. The company has over three decades of experience in designing and manufacturing electronic voltage converters and related products for commercial and recreational vehicles.
Since visiting for the first time in 2011, I have been fascinated with the level of lean excellence at Rinnai. I recently had the pleasure to interview Mr Masao Kosugi, Director of Rinnai Corporation. Kosugi has been at Rinnai since they first started studying the Toyota Production System (TPS). Being a leading Japanese corporation, I am sure Rinnai were practicing a quite reasonable level of lean back in 1979. But a visit from Toyota’s Taiichi Ohno changed everything.
Mr Peter Gardner, Global Manufacturing Engineering Director, TI Automotive held a presentation to the South Australian Lean Manufacturing Special Interest Group in May 2013. The talk focused on having the right motivation and attitude towards lean implementation, and discussed the use of consistent standards and assessment systems within production sites spread across the globe.
On my first visit to Rinnai Corporation, they were surprisingly nervous. Official groups visiting the company had been very rare. They also knew that our Lean Japan Tour group was visiting the likes of Toyota, which is a benchmark for manufacturing in Japan and set up for mass numbers of tour groups. But the quality of the Rinnai tour was first-class, not only because of their genuine willingness to share their story, but also because of the level of lean that their shop floor exhibited.
As a high school student, I was fortunate enough to experience a one-year exchange program to Kumamoto, Japan. During the course of the year, I lived with a number of Japanese host families. I have managed to remain in touch with them over the years and visit them every so often when I travel to Japan. Since one of my host fathers retired a number of years ago, I noticed that his city home and mountain shack were starting to become quite visual.
Walking through factories in Japan, you can visually pick up on the concepts of lean being implemented. Reading through English books on lean, you can generally understand the concepts of lean being implemented. However, some of the essence of lean is hidden behind a veil of Japanese language, customs and culture. It is not generally visible to a foreign eye and not easily translated into a foreign language.
Sam Walsh AO, Executive Director of Rio Tinto gave a keynote address on lean mining at the 40th Anniversary of the establishment of the Australian and New Zealand Chamber of Commerce in Japan. Sam talked about his own background with Japan and Rio Tinto’s iron ore business and discussed how his previous 20-year experience in the automotive industry and lessons learned from lean manufacturing have been critical to Rio Tinto’s mining operations.
The Lean Japan Tour has been an annual initiative of Shinka Management, with support from the Australian Industry Group, since 2007. It is a fully arranged opportunity to experience first-hand the world-class application of lean thinking at some of Japan’s key manufacturers. Generous time is allocated for open-topic discussions with managers of these companies, allowing participants to uncover how the Japanese have approached sustained productivity improvement efforts successfully over many years.
Since establishing formal Australia-Japan trade relations through the 1957 signing of the Agreement on Commerce, Australian exporters have enjoyed a rewarding relationship with Japan. Australian exporters are, however, at risk of forgetting this loyal partner market as the focus shifts to rapidly developing China and its large population. For the best part of four decades, Japan has been Australia’s most important export market, and just because there is a new player in town does not mean that Japan is any less attractive.
