At nippon steel coperations kimitsu works, six men working on the reheating

furnace at the hot still mill formed a JK Group to study how to improve heat-
user efficiency, in their studies, they found that the clue was to stop air from
getting into the furnace. This led them to the idea of using pressurized air. In
order to make the necessary adjusments on the equipment however, they
needed electro-welding and plumbing help from the maintenance
departement engineers.
When they asked the maintenance department for help, they were
told,since youre working on a problem with your own equipment, why dont
you try to do all the work by yourselves? Well be glad to help you learned
the necessary skills, though.
So the furnace operations set about learning welding and plumbing on
holidays and after work under the guidance of maintenance department
engineers. Althought these skills had nothing directly to do with their jobs,
they werw sufficienly skilled to do their own modifications on the reheating
furnace, when the adjustments were made, the heating efficiency was
improved enough to save 5000 kiloliters per ton.
As mentioned earlier, JK stand for Jishu Kanri, which might be translated as
self-management or voluntary participation. In the framework of permanent
employment, japanese workers are psychologically ready to tackle many
different job assignments. When they first join the company, they do not
even know what kind of job they are going to be assigned to. When they are
assigned to spesific positions, such as working on lathe, management makes
sure that they are enough training. When the company decides to transfer
them to a different job, such as milling machine, management again provides
them with the necesarry training, and the workers wilingly make tyhe switch.
So far as the workers are concerned, they are assured of life long
employement with the company and they are willing to acquire the various
skills as part of their on going self-development. They regard themselves as
vendors of nonspesific skills to be developed during their employment. In
turn, management needs their receptiveness to enable the company to
respond as scientific advances an environmental changes create new jobs.
This has, for example, helped management to shift the work force between
different industry segments. When the kyushu coal mines were closed in
1960s, the displaced miners were recession, many of its workers were
transferred to the automobile sectors of the same corporate groups. Such
flexibility and adaptability, an the workers wilingness to tackie any job
assigment, are not of the strengths of japanese economy