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Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Japan

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Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Japan Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Japan The Japanese approach to product creation rests on recognition of the strategic importance of the overall product design capability Daniel E. Whitney In 1991 I spent four months in Japan visiting companies enterprise process of determining customer needs and con­ to study how they use computers in the design verting them to concepts, detailed designs, process plans, Among the of their products. My goals were to determine the outlines factory designs, and delivered products, together with advantages of of the product development process; to find out what their supporting services. This has come to be called the shortening computer tools are in use and where they come from; to product creation process (PCP). learn how the needs of marketing, manufacturing, leadtime are that The Japanese Approach to Product Creation designers learn to assembly, field service, and other areas are taken into The largest and most advanced of the companies I account during design; and to ask what the Japanese see visited generally take a total-enterprise approach to design. do design better as the main blockages to better product design. In my terms, they are vertically integrated in the skills and engineers get I made 25 visits to 15 companies, which range in size and technologies of product realization. One of the most more practice at from 1700 to 450,000 employees and represent heavy, important findings was that Japanese firms - unlike engineering. medium, and precision industries. Several of these firms American or European firms - recognize the strategic are in more than one industry segment, and in several importance of creating both their own manufacturing cases I observed the same product at more than one com­ eqUipment and their own design software. Similarly, they pany (such as cars, video cameras). Visits typically lasted recognize the central importance of their design capabili­ one day and consisted of interviews with designers and ty to their overall way of doing business. The main priori­ their managers, plus visits to design and prototype labora­ ty they cited was to shorten the leadtime for developing tories and computer rooms. In terms of their approaches new products and thereby to shorten the cycle from one to product design, their priorities, and the methods they product generation to the next. Among the advantages of use, I found remarkable uniformity among them. shortening leadtime are that designers learn to do design By product design I mean more than how a product better and engineers get more practice at engineering. looks and feels to its user. My findings comprise brake These improvements compound, adding up to a growing systems, machine tools, and other aspects of products for lead. Other priorities include shortening the response which appearance is far less important than engineering time to customer orders, standardiZing design practices performance. Design in this context means the total- worldwide, deploying proprietary databases and design 7 March/April 1994 rules, connecting all the designers to a common data­ components company, indicates early release of partial base, and enabling unique manufacturing methods that design information. When I asked at Toyota if this was an give a competitive advantage. informal release "between friends," I was told emphatical­ I found that the principal management method ly, "No." Every release is approved by some manager, but Human being used is task overlapping, that is, beginning to official releases have approval from higher management. experience design the manufacturing system and equipment while The trailing tail is called "continuing responsibility" at dominates the product is still being designed. This approach, com­ Toyota, meaning that the designer continues to be calculations and monly called "concurrent engineering" in Japan, far responsible for the design even after it leaves his hands. If exceeds the typical U.S. definition of concurrent engi­ changes need to be made later to help manufacturing or formal data; neering: that the manufacturing people give plenty of another function, the original designer makes them, and human feedback to the designers so that the product can be made thus closing the information loop directly. At communication, efficiently.! The Japanese have been doing the latter for Nippondenso, the leading tail includes "early warning," mostlyface-toface, years and frankly wonder what U.S. companies mean by meaning that downstream people prOVide critiques and is the main tool for "concurrent engineering." updates on the suitability of designs to the upstream The Japanese meaning of "concurrent engineering" people. Nippondenso does not specifically identify a linking design trailing tail activity. activities. is shown in Figure 1. Drawn by a Toyota design manager, this diagram breaks up the car design process into The Human Element approximate generic steps and shows where the official Another important finding was that the bulk of release of information occurs from one step to the next. Japanese design effort is, in fact, human. The penetra­ The height of each balloon schematically represents the tion of computers is very uneven, though growing in manpower loading of a design step over time. The lead­ focused and fascinating ways. Human experience domi­ ing tail of each balloon, called "flying start" at Toyota nates calculations and formal data; and human com­ and "front loading" at Nippondenso, an automotive munication, mostly face-to-face, is the main tool for linking design activities. My hosts boasted of the strength of their engineers' Flying Start and Continuing Responsibility "universal experience," gained in on-the-job training. They feared electronic concurrent engineering based on Market Concept electronic mail, expreSSing concern that it would impair Official . face-to-face communication. On-the-job training is ;SfOf"'~ release required because new Japanese engineering graduates information ~ ..Styling have surprisingly little specific, deep knowledge in any .... Continuing responsibility one engineering field. University curricula do not contain F/ying......:4l>- Preliminary design reqUired subjects, and many classes resemble survey Start courses. Students thus graduate with wide exposure to many technologies but without much deep knowledge or ~ Detail design commitment to a particular technical discipline. Though American graduates are trained far more deeply, their o Prototypes backgrounds are narrower. Whereas U.S. companies com­ plain about American students' lack of preparation for o Evaluation the real world and see the necessary in-house training characteristically as a burden, Japanese companies rec­ ~ Tooling design ognize that schools cannot provide real-world experience and look on in-house training as an opportunity. -<C>- Tooling The first year or two of employment at a large production Japanese company has some of the features of boot camp, Figure 1. The Japanese concept of concurrent engineering, as drawn by a Toyota design stamping the new hires - sometimes quite forcefully ­ manager, encompasses an integrated information flow. with the desired features and style of the company. For 8 Target Volume 10, Number 2 example, a company that needed electronics engineers involves breaking up the typical design packages into could not convince any to apply, so it retrained the most smaller ones and determining the key precedences to find promising mechanical engineers who showed up. Such the earliest availability of, or need for, information - or tactics are beco'ming increasingly necessary as more even to make that information available earlier by rear­ graduates opt for jobs in finance or insurance rather than ranging decision sequences. manufacturing. For example, in preparing to make jet engine shafts, Because of this emphasis on human experience and the manufacturing equipment designer needs to know Much current u.s. communication, design teams are kept quite small. first the length of the shaft and its maximum outside interest in the use Teams that design products with 100 to 1000 parts (auto­ diameter. Then the engineer can tell whether existing ofcomputers to focus cameras, dot matrix printers, internal combustion machines can make the shaft; if so, the materials can aid designer­ engines) typically consist of 20 engineers, with the largest be ordered. Only much later does the engineer need team numbering 40 and many as small as ten. Much to know the inside diameter and details of smaller steps to-designer current U.S. interest in the use of computers to aid in the outside profile. Similarly, designers of blades that communication designer-to-designer communication appears irrelevant attach to the shaft can begin designing them, since they appears irrelevant to the Japanese, since managing such small teams man­ too do not depend on the inside diameter. If the shaft's to the japanese, ually is relatively easy. design is released only as a finished package, after since managing This small team size also supports deliberate efforts lengthy engineering analyses have determined such small teams to broaden rather than narrow the engineers' expertise. the best inside diameter and detailed outside profile, nei­ For example, at a camera company, mechanical design ther blade nor equipment designers can start early. manually is typically falls into four areas: film transport, mirror While it is expensive for companies to develop and relatively easy. box, auto-focus lens, and shutter.
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