Japanization on the shopfloor

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a study into 12 UK and nine Japanese automotive component plants. Compared to the UK plants, the Japanese plants showed a 60 per cent superiority on productivity and a 9:1 superiority in quality. Detailed examination of work structures on the shopfloor revealed that UK plants devolve more responsibility to operators for activities such as quality monitoring and improvement, work allocation and work pace determination than the Japanese plants do. This implies that key aspects of the Japanese model may have been misrepresented in the Japanization debate.