| La Lettre du GERPISA | no 112 (avril 1997) |
Debate - Hikari Nohara
I would like to point out three aspects influenced by globalization.
1. The necessity of the geography of plants. As a result of globalization we find the several types of division of labor in terms of function among plants of the same company. First, many companies build high-value added low volume cars in mother or advanced countries, and build low-value added high volume ones in developing countries. Because of the difference of products and social environment they take different technology, equipments, working conditions and work organization in different countries. Second, each plant has different but necessary role in terms of diffusion of new production way. As you know, while running Tahara, Toyota established the new concept of plant organization. Then they build a new Kyusyu plant based on this new concept without any compromise. Through the experiment at Kyusyu, the concept has been more sophisticated and generalized, so it becomes possible to apply this new concept quite flexibly to old plants such as Motomachi and Tutumi, which were built under the old concept as a physical construction. Now they are trying to transplant this way at Kentucky. Therefore, without the geography of whole plants of one company we cannot discuss its trajectory or strategy.
2. The second possible change of the relationship between a customer and supplier. On the fire of Aishin Seiki plant on Feb.1 we notice that almost all Toyota cars, around 90 %, except for highest class brand, Celsio and lowest class brand, Tursel, are supplied with 'proportioning valve' by Aishin Seiki. This firm manufactures this parts, 420,000 per month at the same plant. It's really the mass production maker. In this regard we had better add the concept 'part variety' to 'commercial variety' and 'industrial variety'. This example makes us reconsider the customer-supplier relationship. As we already know, during 70's and 80's, because of growth of Japanese auto industry, many Japanese first-tier suppliers got new position (so called Drawings-Approved), which was far beyond the position as 'sitauke' (subsidiaries). This was the first change.
However, we now have to think about the second change. During ongoing globalization, if some partmaker becomes the supplier to provide almost all customers with some particular part world-wide, it gives this supplier great advantage. It is really a globalized mass-production supplier. This advantage is very clear. Therefore strong global mass-producer, like the second, or the third 'Denso' will emerge in the near future. What will happen in equipment makers through globalization? With regard to this question I remember that power balance between an assembler and an equipment maker had sifted in some cases in 80's. Because assemblers expanded and transplanted many plants too quickly from the viewpoint of necessary number of line-designing engineers, they'd to ask the equipment makers to provide whole line system or some units of equipments instead of ordering single machine. As a result the line system became black box to assemblers. The technology of line designing had transferred to, and the leadership of price decision-making of supplied equipments had shifted to equipment makers. I think the similar situation will emerge more drastically. Many suppliers have not enough knowledge of machinery even now, but they have to globalize themselves beyond their capability. Because of that the power balance between parts maker and equipment suppliers could be changed.
3. Some convergence of the change in work organization in three different world, Sweden, Japan and other Asian countries. Globalization increases the working experience of managers, engineers and workers in foreign factories. Even in the same country, people can see the different type of plants which have originally come from different countries. As a result people can easily and directly compare the different plant environments. Therefore, the exceptionally severe conditions become hard to be maintained. In addition, now in Japan young workers can earn their own living without being employed by a big company. Young labor shortage and the increase of aged and female workers are the lengthy tendency. Under these conditions it's unavoidable to change the plant environment in Japan even if labor movements have no voice.
Roughly speaking, there are four kinds of improvements of plant environment. The first one is better working conditions such as more wage, less working hours and the abolition of midnight shift and so on. The second one is the improvement of work environment like amenity. The third one is to exclude hard work, by which I mean the promotion of automation and ergonomic improvement. The fourth one is recovery of the meaningful manual labor. In terms of the third and fourth there seems to be two paths among Japanese auto assemblers. Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda take the automation path, but Toyota and Honda rather take the fourth path. Toyota management has had absolute power without facing any protest how to organize work at shop floor. As a result the extent of the division of labor at manual work is extremely high at Toyota. Therefore, intensification, and fragmentation and meaninglessness of work may be highest at Toyota. Because of this young labor shortage problem is most serious at Toyota among Japanese auto firms.
On the other hand they have the tradition to think very systematically about work organization, such as 'operation improvement first, tool and equipment improvement second'. Therefore Toyota can not avoid to face the problem how to recover meaningful work, and can solve this problem very systematically. The answer is so called 'autonomous complete production process'. This means the stop of fragmentation of work and recovery of contextual meaning of labor process or, at least, operation process of single worker. Although assembly line is still kept it is so surprising for them to reach the same core concept, recovery of contextual meaning as one of work organization at Uddevalla. As you may notice, the term 'context' is the fundamental characteristic of Japanese firm organization, such as 'contextual skill' within a firm and 'relation specific skill' among firms.
Furthermore, the priority of context is basic and deeply-rooted characteristic of Japanese culture which sometimes functions as irresponsibility of individual person. This contextual approach is quite different from analytical approach in modern Western society. Now Toyota comes back to Japanese traditional way of thinking 'context'. We Japanese are originally familiar with the concept of context, so the recovery of contextual meaning of labor process may become easily dominant among Japanese firms. Turning the focus into assembly industries outside auto ones, we find many plants in Japan where they abolish the belt conveyer or even assembly line, they introduce team work or single worker's work to assemble single final product, and integrate indirect work to direct work. These are the cases in assembling of a word processor, video camera, microscope, digital watch, facsimile machine, portable telephone and so on. The reason is why? Because Globalization makes international competition very severe. Market become so segmented and product life cycle become so short. Therefore, as far as assembly makers concerned huge investment to equipment and mass production lose the advantage. Craft work become relatively advantageous compared to mass production with dedicated machines or even small batch production with robots. When craft work or labor intensive work with less investment to machines become prevail to some extent, what is the influence on transplantation of Japanese firms in Asian countries? When they set up a new plant in Asian countries less number of workers and supervisors are needed to dispatch from Japan if they are more experienced craft workers.
In less automated plants workers have chance to experience craft work or labor intensive work suitable for Asian plants. In this regard contextually meaningful work has some advantage in globalization in Asia. Even in auto assembly plants such as Honda, Takanezawa, Ikeda, Daihatsu they already take team work production way without assembly line. Therefore, we may think that recovery of contextual meaning of work isn't the story in Utopia but the reality to some extent. However, I also emphasize that 'context' in Japanese culture means consecutive but partial context, but does not mean whole context such as 'holistic learning' and 'parallel flow' which is emphasized in Uddevalla work organization.