{"id":182971,"date":"2015-04-22T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/04\/22\/there-may-still-be-some-utility-left-in-the-mk-1-human\/"},"modified":"2015-04-22T18:49:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T23:49:00","slug":"there-may-still-be-some-utility-left-in-the-mk-1-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/04\/22\/there-may-still-be-some-utility-left-in-the-mk-1-human\/","title":{"rendered":"There May Still Be Some Utility Left in the Mk. 1 Human"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toyota has discovered that robots cannot do it all, and that they need highly experienced experts to maximize the productivity at their plants<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Inside Toyota Motor Corp.\u2019s oldest plant, there\u2019s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai\u2019s vision of the future.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWe need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,\u201d said Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota\u2019s plants. \u201cWhen I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>These gods, or \u201ckami-sama\u201d in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota\u2019s next step forward is counterintuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across the nation so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cToyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,\u201d said Jeff Liker, who has written eight books on Toyota and visited Kawai last year. \u201cIn almost every company you would visit, the workers\u2019 jobs are to feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>The return of the kami-sama is emblematic of how Toyoda, 57, is remaking the company founded by his grandfather as the chief executive officer has pledged to tilt priorities back toward quality and efficiency from a growth mentality. He\u2019s reining in expansion at the world\u2019s-largest automaker with a three-year freeze on new car plants.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWhat Akio Toyoda feared the company lost when it was growing so fast was the time to struggle and learn,\u201d said Liker, who met with Toyoda in November. \u201cHe felt Toyota got big-company disease and was too busy getting product out.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn\u2019t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota\u2019s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.<\/span>

<\/span>In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota\u2019s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago.<\/span>

<\/span>Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.<\/span>

<\/span>The work extends beyond crankshafts. Kawai credits manual labor for helping workers at Honsha improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts.<\/span>

<\/span>Though Kawai doesn\u2019t envision the day his employer will rid itself of robots \u2014 760 of them take part in 96 percent of the production process at its Motomachi plant in Japan \u2014 he has introduced multiple lines dedicated to manual labor in each of Toyota\u2019s factories in its home country, he said.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWe cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,\u201d Kawai said. \u201cTo be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

True dat.<\/p>\n

Guys on the shop floor are an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toyota has discovered that robots cannot do it all, and that they need highly experienced experts to maximize the productivity at their plants: Inside Toyota Motor Corp.\u2019s oldest plant, there\u2019s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai\u2019s vision of the future.\u201cWe …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108,1005,1221,1003,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry","category-business","category-manufacturing","category-philosophy","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}