Japanese Management

Style
The attitude of the employer toward the
employees is more often like a father to the son
living together in the family.
Japanese Decision Making
 DM in Japanese organizations is based on the
culture of collectivism and shared responsibility.
 Consensus Decision making.
Process
Advantages Dis-Advantages
 Democratic  Long time
 Participative  Hampers Organization
effectiveness
Life –Time Employment
 Employees directly recruited from the school rather
than open job market.
 Employees are expected to stay a career long.
 The recruitment is based on general
characteristics and abilities of potential employees.
 Complicated screening process
 Academic Examination
 Investigation of family background
 Detailed personal interview
Seniority Promotion
 It is the major motivation to stay long in one
company.
 Under this system remuneration of the worker is
determined on the basis of the number of years
spent in the company.
 Seniority based wage system since 1970.
Kaizen
 Japanese philosophy that focuses on
continuous improvement.
 To be most effective kaizen must operate with 3
principles in place
 consider the process
 systemic thinking of the whole process
 a learning & non-blaming
The foundation of the Kaizen method
consists of 5 founding elements

 teamwork,
 personal discipline,
 improved morale,
 quality circles, and
 suggestions for improvement.
Kaizen five-S framework

 Seiri – tidiness
 Seiton – orderliness
 Seiso – cleanliness
 Seiketsu - standardized clean-up
 Shitsuke - discipline
Six Sigma
 Six Sigma is a business management strategy,
originally developed by Motorola, that today enjoys
wide-spread application in many sectors of industry.
 Six Sigma seeks to identify and remove the causes
of defects and errors in manufacturing and business
processes.
 It uses a set of quality management methods,
including statistical methods, and creates a special
infrastructure of people within the organization who
are experts in these methods.
Sigma levels
 One Sigma = 31% efficiency
 Two Sigma = 69.2% efficiency
 Three Sigma = 93.32% efficiency
 Four Sigma = 99.379% efficiency
 Five Sigma = 99.977% efficiency
 Six Sigma = 99.9997% efficiency
DMAIC
 Define process improvement that are consistent
with customer demands and the enterprise strategy.
 Measure key aspects of the current process and
collect relevant data.
 Analyze the data to verify cause-and-effect
relationships.
 Improve or optimize the process based upon data
analysis.
 Control to ensure that any deviations from target
are corrected before they result in defects.
DMADV
 Define design goals that are consistent with customer
demands and the enterprise strategy.
 Measure and identify CTQs (characteristics that are
Critical To Quality), product capabilities, production
process capability, and risks.
 Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create a
high-level design and evaluate design to select the best
design.
 Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design
verification. This phase may require simulations.
 Verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement the
production process.