General Manager Li Xiangming was once assigned by the Ministry of Machinery and Electronics to study in Japanese enterprises. After returning to China, he wrote an article entitled "Perception of the Vitality of Japanese Enterprises". This article was published in "Bearings" No. 1, 1997, Machinery and Electronics Daily, etc.

2013-1-10 04:22:00 PM

Perception of the vitality of our company Li Xiangming

I have been trained and inspected at the world-renowned Seiko Corporation of Japan. During this period, I not only visited Seiko's Saitama, Head Office, Maebashi, Fujisawa and other factories, the Automobile Bearing Technology Center and Seiko's cooperative factories Fujido, Toho Co., Ltd. and Isuzu Motors, but also had the opportunity to conduct a 6-week on-site training at Seiko's Ishibe Factory, which represents the new level of world automobile bearing manufacturing. This gave me a deeper understanding of all aspects of Nippon Seiko Co., Ltd., a world-leading bearing company. The company has only 991 employees, produces 100 million sets of automobile bearings annually, with an output value of 50 billion yen. The products of the Ishibe factory account for 40% of the market share of 15 automobile manufacturers in Japan. Through the investigation, I learned that each Japanese company has its own characteristics and styles, goals and slogans, but they all have many common mature experiences and management methods, which are worth learning from.  

1. Have a team of high-quality employees who are united, diligent and hardworking 

The consensus among Japanese corporate managers is that companies are dominated by people, and people are the foundation and key to corporate development. Just as Japan has made great efforts to promote education in order to achieve the national policy of "building a country on economy" after the war, Japanese companies attach great importance to education and talent training in order to win the competition. All major enterprises have training centers, which provide professional education and modern education and training courses at different levels and types of work, cultivate various talents needed for enterprise development, and strive to enable managers and employees at all levels to creatively solve various complex problems encountered by the enterprise. For example, employees must undergo on-the-job training and assessment before taking up their posts, and qualification training and assessment must be taken before promotion. The purpose is to make each employee clear about the status and role of their respective positions in the enterprise, creating a feeling that it is difficult to take up a post, difficult to be promoted, and that work is hard-won, thereby inspiring employees to cherish and love their jobs and study their jobs seriously.

Secondly, Japanese enterprises attach great importance to the establishment of a sense of community of shared destiny among employees.

All enterprises generally implement a management system of precise division of labor and stable cooperation. This system promotes each employee to develop to a high level in their own work field, strengthens the mutual dependence and cooperation among employees, and makes them consciously loyal to the common destiny and common interests, and work hard for the enterprise for decades like "worker bees". The employees' dedication to their work, their in-depth and careful study, and their pursuit of perfection are admirable. It is common to see managers drinking refreshing drinks until late at night for a plan, a problem or a product, and start hard work again the next day. Of course, the company has also taken many positive and effective measures to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees, such as allowing employees to own a certain number of company stocks at a preferential price lower than the market price, closely linking personal interests with the future of the company; the employee salary sequence, position salary, additional salary, dividends and incentive salary such as rationalization suggestions, as well as the annual top-down assessment and promotion system are closely linked to the employee's work ability and contribution to the company. These measures have encouraged employees to take the factory as their home and work for the company, which is the basis of the company's competitiveness. When we walked into Japanese companies, we felt that we had entered a "brand new high-efficiency space". The "5S" activities that companies have been constantly carrying out, namely sorting, reorganizing, cleaning, sweeping and self-beautification, have established the company in a good working environment. The meticulous work style of employees and the cooperation between them based on the Japanese group spirit have made all the work of the company in an orderly and orderly manner.

Second, timely technology introduction and endless technological transformation

Technology introduction is one of the prominent features of Japan's economic development that is well known to the world. We have seen that Seiko Corporation and Isuzu Motors, which are leading in many technologies, have not relaxed their efforts to introduce advanced technologies and equipment from the United States, Germany, Switzerland and other countries to enrich themselves and develop themselves. They not only make full use of the imported technology and equipment, but also pay great attention to supplementing, improving and developing them to make them more perfect and seek greater benefits. The Japanese call this the "+" effect. However, what is commendable is the endless technological innovation and technological transformation of Japanese enterprises. In the past, when we talked about the high efficiency of Japanese enterprises, we thought that they all adopted "high, precise and cutting-edge" modern and brand-new equipment. During our stay in Japan, we witnessed the equipment of Japanese enterprises with our own eyes, but it was greatly unexpected that they also had equipment of several service ages from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and contemporary times, and produced equally excellent products. The reason is that through endless technological innovation and technological transformation, these equipment of different ages have approached and reached the performance of the new generation. The managers of Japanese enterprises require technicians and operators working on the production front to find ways to replace themselves with machines or instruments and liberate themselves from the production front. The Ishibe Factory requires each employee to submit 2 to 3 small reforms and rationalization suggestions every month. If they fail to do so for several consecutive months, they will be considered to be indifferent to their work and their salary will be reduced. If the suggestions are adopted, the company will also reward them. In addition, the factory also has an important technological progress and staff reduction plan while formulating an increase in production plan every year. This is exactly the opposite of the idea that Chinese companies streamline the second and third lines, enrich the front line, and increase the number of people when increasing production. It can be said that the advanced manufacturing technology and equipment of Japanese companies are the result of actively introducing, absorbing and developing, and combining with the accumulation of endless technological innovation and technological transformation.