Kirin Brewery – Factory Tour
Kirin Brewery is known as one of the leading beer makers in Japan. It is one of the subsidiaries of the Kirin Holdings Company which is an integrated beverages company that engages in the manufacture and sales of not only alcoholic but also non-alcoholic beverages as well as pharmaceutical and bio-chemical products. Kirin operates in eight countries and is a member of the Mitsubishi Group.
Corporate Information
- Company: Kirin Brewery Company, Limited
- Foundation: 1907
- Location: Headquartered in Tokyo
- Main Business: Manufacture and sales of alcohol beverages
Kirin Brewery
Kirin Breweries is one of the leading brewery companies in Japan. Its history dates back to 1885 when its foreign-owned forerunner company called Japan Brewery Company was established in Yokohama in 1885. Three years later, the brewery started selling beer named Kirin Beer. In 1907, the Kirin Brewery Company was established as a separate Japanese legal entity with the financial support from Japanese investors including the president of Mitsubishi at that time.
The company now has nine brewery plants across Japan. Kirin has an unwavering commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. They have established a sophisticated system allowing tracing of their products and ingredients throughout the supply chain, including through the entire production process.
The tour includes a guided walk through the production process from barley-mashing to packaging. The tour also features a video presentation about the company, exhibits of different beer ingredients, and for those thirsty at the end of the visit, finishes with a tasting of their signature beer.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
The Shinka Lean Management Tour was a great experience, with group members from across the globe. A combination of classroom, hands-on and site visit learning provided good insight into lean principles. The tour was very well organised, ran smoothly and was a pleasure to be a part of.
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Dear Paul, Thank you for the nice experience you and your team were able to provide me! It has been a very professional tour and even more a very nice human connection with you and Eri. You have built a nice team that makes people’s lives change! Ciao, Maurizio
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Cupertino, California, United States
Great experience delivered by passionate professionals. The training is well-balanced between real life factory/hospital visits (lean in action), theory (basic concepts, why it makes sense) and exercise (set up your own mini factory line using lean concepts). All of this where it started: Japan. Definitely recommend the tour for any professional looking for ways to…
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During the Lean Japan Tour I came to the realization that improving an organization is not through large capital investments alone. We were completely surrounded by examples of minor investments into small improvements that produced significant savings. The clever use of visual management techniques gave a clear understanding of the current situation and Ben who…
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
It was great experiencing factories that have implemented simple and effective processes in the right manner. I enjoyed the stories from each sensei on their journey of kaizen and how they implemented it within their factories. Ben, Eri and Juan were incredible hosts, the whole tour was seamless and the content was really valuable. This…
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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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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.
Tour Inquiries
Interested in joining us in Japan? For additional information prior to registration please fill in the form provided or contact us.