Ishii Machinery – Factory Tour
Ishii Machinery is a well-established SME manufacturer based in the city of Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture, with 70 employees. The company engineers and manufactures a wide range of industrial precision components and equipment which are mainly supplied to the automotive and aerospace industries.
Corporate Information
- Company: Ishii Machinery Co., Ltd.
- Foundation: 1888
- Location: Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture
- Main Business: Manufacturing of industrial precision components and equipment
Ishii Machinery – Lean Characteristics
5S, Just-In-Time Production
Ishii Machinery shares a history of monozukuri (Japanese art of making things – manufacturing) with the likes of Toyota and Suzuki Motor. Their origins lie in the manufacturing and sales of loom machines in the 1800s. Their product lines have expanded to equipment and components for the aerospace, automotive and other sectors.
Based in Ashikaga City which is known as the City of 5S where over 200 organizations participate in 5S activities on a daily basis, the company also has been actively involved in the Ashikaga-style 5S Program. 5S is used as the basis for their Just-In-Time production control system in only producing and transporting what is required, at the time it is required, in the quantity it is required. This is their response to the increasing expectations of their customers and society in general.
The plant tour includes a presentation, a site tour and a Q&A session with senior managers.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The Lean Japan Tour has allowed me to learn both professionally and culturally. It has been an invaluable experience to learn through interacting directly with a Japanese sensei. It has been a pleasure experiencing this program in Japan, with the locals always helping us as if we were a relative. The Lean Japan tour is…
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Sanaswadi, Maharashtra, India
I am deeply grateful to Shinka Management, and to Paul, Eri and Ichi, for an outstanding Lean Japan Tour experience. Their expertise and hospitality made the journey both educational and enjoyable. The insights gained from visiting world-class lean organizations were invaluable, and the dedication of the Shinka team to ensuring we absorbed practical knowledge was…
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Singapore
The Lean Japan Tour with Shinka Management was an inspiring and transformative experience. Seeing lean practices in action and learning from Japanese companies was truly eye-opening. This journey has motivated me to embrace lean principles in my own work. Big thanks to Shinka Management for such an enriching program — I highly recommend it!
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Warrensburg, Missouri, United States
We learned from the masters (sensei), who were filled with wisdom, passion and experience. The Lean Japan Tour content was very practical and made a lot of sense. We received excellent hospitality from Paul and Craig of Shinka Management.
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Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand
An outstanding experience. The opportunity to learn and build knowledge with experts in the principles of lean management was first class. The Japan context simply makes all the difference in putting that learning into context and allowed me to get “under the hood” of how it is really applied in practice through a variety of…
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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
I would highly recommend the tour to anyone who is in the business of improving people. The ideas stimulated through this tour have helped me reform our entire vision of what improvement means for our business.
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The Shinka Management Lean Japan Tour is a professional development program run several times annually. The program includes a mix of lean and kaizen seminars, hands-on lean training and visits to several benchmark lean companies. For further information and program dates, see the lean tour overview page.
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