Japan Final Days

8 August 2013

Today marks the final appointment of my Nuffield adventure and thank you to Kumi Ito of ALIC and Kate Neath of MLA, who joined me today in venturing north into the Tsukuba prefecture to visit Tukuba Kimura Farms (TKF), a business just commencing its CI journey.

TKF produce about 1000kg of packed, mixed lettuce leaf and an assortment of herbs, daily for sale in Tokyo's restaurants, shopping centres and wholesale markets. Based on a biological production model, plants are grown in open fields and hot houses across 3 prefectures in Japan and packed at Tsukuba.

50 employees work around the clock to ensure all the packed fresh produce is available for distribution by 12 noon each day and have commenced using some of the base level TPS methods to stream line their business.  To date operational improvements have been achieved by using  the following tools;

Waste walking the packing line

Standard working procedures

Asset utilisation reviews, &

Weekly cross functional management meetings.

TKF have along way to go in achieving their objective of a 3 fold increase in production within 5 years, but have commenced this journey with the right knowledge gained form the TPS audit, best of luck.

Thank you to everyone I have meet and discussed TPS with, to the team at Wynns for covering me during this sabbatical, to TWE for the opportunity and support for this scholarship and mostly to my family for allowing me to travel, for accepting the high and lows of the past 2 years and for growing up so much while I have been away. 

Wow what a journey, Cheers.

Japan August 2013

5 August

UD Trucks a division of Volvo International

Todays visit focused on pure manufacturing and the ways CI has evolved in the Japanese workplace. UD operate on a workplace 1 hour north of Tokyo on 400ha of factory space and represent 12% of all truck sales in Japan.  3700 employees work on the site and are amongst 9000 nation wide.

Over 1000 model types of trucks are available and purchasing orders are triggers for build operations, right through from engine construction to fabrication of chassis and cabins.

UD rely heavily on 2 CI principals to achieve less than 2% rework;

 Poka-Yoka-: mistake proofing devices to assist employees to complete the value adding task.

Standard Work-:specific work descriptions detailing cycle time, takt time, work sequence and inventory parts required.

6August

Toyota

The birth place of CI or Toyota Production System (TPS).  Unfortunately photos are not allowed and lone visitors are restricted to where they can travel/talk to.

The two pillars we were presented as the key to Toyota success are;

Just in Time (JIT) manufacturing, to create the product at the correct time in the correct amount to meet the customers needs., once an order has been placed and confirmed, thus removing Muda (waste) and surplus inventory. 

Jidoka: the principal that production line must be stopped if the operator is not achieving 100% quality of value during their specific task.

Jidoka works by empowering the  operator to identify the error, plan to rectify within station takt time, if unable notifies supervisor, they then have a designated time to address, if not achieved line will be stopped until error has been rectified. This practices ensures 100% quality of product makes it to the end station.

Toyota are now listed as the largest car manufacturer in the world and boost that 97% of their vehicles can be recycled back into manufacturing. A very impressive tour even without close access to the CI tools they have been using.

7 August

 Tsukiji Market, Tokyo

230ha of open cry auctioning system for fish and vegetables, destined for the Tokyo population.  An amazing place with no CI or safety foundations evident, quite surprising. 

Tsukiji is famous for its live tuna sales and turns over   $300million yen/day in sales, supports 30,000 employees, moves 7500 tonnes of produce in 24 hours and contributes to an estimated 7.8 billion yen in sales/day for fish&vegetables across Tokyo's 6 markets.

An amazing market space and such a contrary to the organised workplaces visited.

Italy August 2013

After some quality family time with Suse, the scholarship travels have recommenced, with a focused look at Italian viticulture.

29 July

Alessandro Ceretto, Ceretto Wines, Barolo

100 ha vineyard with 4 winery with 4 DCOG regions, very expensive overheads to secure the right to label wines DCOG (appellation). Alessandro is the third generation viticulturist at this Barole House and is very passionate about organics and bio-dynamic farming. During development stages no soil tillage occurs, thus preserving the soil micro-fauna.

The Italians to are dealing with high alcohol wines with changes in their canopy management techniques, which involves less trimming and  retention of more leaf at harvest, contrary to some of the French thinking.

Apart from copper and sulphur, Alessandro uses no pesticides and manages weeds undervine with slashers. 

30 July

Alberto Cordero, Cordero Montezemolo, La Morra

19th generation land manager,  on the same site his fore founders settled 700 years ago.  Wine production started in the 1850 and has continued unbroken to this day. The marriage of old a new technology is very evident with raw livestock manure and natural yeasts being used across the vineyard and winery, whilst a robotic lawn mower tends to the lawns surrounding the winery.   

31 July 

Francesco & Ivano Reali, Castello Gabbiano, San Casciano

170ha vineyard, 50% leased and 10% being redeveloped. Records indicate wine was grown on the estate as far back as 1464, however unfortunately museum wines only date back  20 years.

Bud grafting during the past season has been very successful, with strike rates of 98% being achieved.  This grafting appears popular with many growers chip bud grafting the desired clones onto rootstocks that have been in the ground for 12 months, rather than planting a grafted dormant vine.

Heavy reliance on large track working equipment, with 6 dozers & excavators working across 10Ha of vineyard redevelopment, removing rock.  A costly exercise!

Thank you to the hosts of this leg of the journey a very interesting an engaging few days looking at Italian viticulture.  Onto Japan for the final leg of the trip where I hope to visit as many businesses practicing CI as possible.