Suzaki Industries – Factory Tour
Suzaki Industries is a SME with approximately 60 employees that produces pressed, welded and assembled components for the automotive industry. The company’s major customers are Toyota Group companies including Gifu Auto Body but it also supplies other car manufacturing companies.
Corporate Information
- Company: Suzaki Industries
- Foundation: 1953
- Location: Gifu Prefecture
- Main Business: automotive parts manufacturing
Suzaki Industries – Lean Characteristics
TPS, Kanban, Poka-Yoke, SMED
A visit to this small auto parts supplier will showcase a great example of a successful lean transformation of a company that was once on the brink of bankruptcy when Japan’s bubble economy burst. Under the leadership of former Chairman Suzaki, the company had adopted TPS and made tireless continuous efforts to eliminate waste from their processes while implementing kaizen improvement measures in order to survive and turn around their business.
The former chairman will lead us on a factory visit and discussion focusing on improvements that have been made over the years that has brought them up to the level required to be retained as a supplier to the Toyota Group.
The visit will also include a detailed explanation of the kanban system used within the factory, excellent examples of poka-yoke, a technique used in a lean manufacturing process to prevent human errors to achieve zero defect quality control as well as to implement safety measures. Demonstration of their efforts with SMED as well as an example of layout and process improvement for a production cell will also be demonstrated and discussed.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
This service has added huge value to the Saudi Arabian Government-sponsored Tomoh Industrial SMEs. Thank you Shinka for the effort made to deliver this service in a very professional way.
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Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
The training schedule is very tight and efficient, the class room training was practical and led by an experienced teacher from Toyota, and the tour visits covered a wide range of industries including car manufacturing, parts processing and healthcare.
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Gothenburg, Sweden
A great tour. Having spent over 20 years in manufacturing I now understand the true meaning of Kaizen.
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Towson, Maryland, United States
The whole experience of the lean tour was excellent. I learned so much over the past week and all of my previous knowledge of lean was reinforced. Not only did I learn about lean management but I was also impressed with the Japanese culture. The whole team at Shinka Management were very helpful and made…
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Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Learning 5S and TPS while experiencing and living the Japanese culture through communication, direct interaction and viewing various live examples from different perspectives, created a solid reference for us to understand the main reason behind the success of these systems. This is a complete lifestyle that involves human contribution, a continuous thrive for improvement, and…
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Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Thank you for the well-organized and informative tour. It can be distracting to read and attend lectures about lean, but when combined with practical training and actual visits to the home of lean, it helps to clarify and connect all the dots. The tour was an eye-opening experience where we witnessed lean manufacturing principles in…
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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.