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How Japanese Work
What is Control?

Control is one of the basic functions of managers. The following article gives an account of how Japanese managers use control in improving the quality of their products and processes.

-By Madan Lamsal

When linked with the philosophy of control in ‘Quality Control’ it is the process of checking whether work is being done according to policies, orders, plans and standards, and if it is not, taking action to correct any deviation and prevent it from recurring, then proceeding according to the plan.

Things will not go well if contradictory orders such as ‘Reduce Costs’ and ‘Raise Quality’ are issued independently by different departments. Like quality control, control must be comprehensive, it will not proceed smoothly if exercised sporadically on the basis of sectionalism. Nepali companies also could apply the control methods designed and applied by many Japanese companies.

For scientific management procedure, Japanese have designed the following six steps for control.

Step I: Decide on objectives and targets: Control is impossible unless objectives and targets are clearly defined and it is also impossible if objectives and policies change time to time. For example, one cannot control a design or process without setting quality standards. And research and technology cannot be controlled with setting quality targets. While setting objectives and targets, some general points should be taken into considerations.

Objectives should be set in accordance with the policy. While top-management policy is the most important, it must be broken down into sub-policies at the level of the department manager, factory manager, section manager, supervisor and foreman. These sub-policies must be clearly spelled out so that people at every level know what exactly to do within their range of responsibility and authority.
Policy must have a proper rationale for which accurate information from inside and outside the company should be collected. The sources of informations may include market research, consumers’ feedback, competitors and foreign market, raw material information and the like.
Policy must not be issued in fragments and there must be no inconsistency between different policies. Policies should focus not on departments or organizations but on objectives and problems. They should allocate responsibility to different teams or related departments.
Priorities must be decided when setting policy. It is best to list down important problems to maximum five on which everyone else has given up.
Objectives and targets should be stated clearly and specifically, if possible with concrete deadlines. It should be expressed numerically with methods of measurement, so far as possible.
Objectives and policies must be distributed widely in writing and announced annually or at the end of each accounting period.

Step II: Decide on the methods to be used for achieving the objectives.

It is not enough simply to state objectives and targets without indicating the means by which they can be achieved. For example, merely announcing quality objectives or cost objectives will not produce good results without also deciding how these objectives are to be achieved and what each person should do to achieve them.

Therefore, the company should prepare standards for different areas like operating standards, technical standards, design standards, etc.

Standards, particularly technical and operating, should deal with causes. Standardization is carried out in order to delegate authority. It is necessary to standardize what should be done in exceptional situations. In order to minimize the adverse impacts of potential problems in the implementation process, it should be decided in advance, who should do what, how far they should go and who they should receive instructions from.

Standards must be properly documented, with a record of all changes.

Step III: Carry out education and training programs: All those in charge of others are responsible for training their subordinates. However well-constructed may an organization be, if the people in it are not trained or educated to do their respective jobs, the organization can not progress. Therefore, industry should invest more in educating the employees. Like an orchestra conductor, one person should be able to manage a hundred others. Training and education within a company consists of the following three types, according to the Japanese exports.

I. Group training
II. On the job training of subordinates by superiors
III. Letting people teach themselves by boldly giving them full authority for their work.

Among Nepali companies, joint venture banks, five star hotels and companies like Surya Tobacco, Gorkha Brewery and Group 4 Securitas are providing different trainings as stated above to their employees. Though other companies also provide trainings, the employees are found complaining that they do not get right atmosphere in the work places to use the things they learn from the trainings.

Step IV: Do the Work:

Step V: Check the results: Checking results consists of seeing whether the work is being carried out in line with policies, instructions and objectives. Issuing an order and teaching people how to carry it out is not the end of a manager’s job; he must also check the results and find out whether things have gone well according to policies and directives.

While controlling work processes, there are different methods applied by Japanese companies. One simple method is taking a walk around the work place and seeing whether everything is being carried out according to policies and standards. This way it can also be checked whether the equipment, measuring instruments, automatic control systems, jigs and tools are functioning well and work is proceeding smoothly.

Examining the results of the work means to check changes in quality production volumes, delivery times, inventories, amounts of materials and labor required to make a product unit, unit costs, safety, pollution etc.

Step VI: Take corrective action: Just checking and leaving things at that will not do any good. If the work is not going well or there is some abnormality, something must be done about it. The causes must be found and eliminated from the process to ensure that the process of work proceeds smoothly. When doing this, the main aim should not be to remove symptom but the causes of the symptom, or the root causes.

It is the job of managers to train people to observe the standards and to ensure that they do so properly. However, it is not always their subordinate’s fault when they produce odd results or fail to follow the standards. If the work is not being done according to the standards, the following action should be taken to correct it as suggested by Japanese experts:

Try having the workers do the job according to the standard and look carefully at what is happening.
Retrain the workers. It is wrong to think that they must be able to do something just because they have been taught to.
Take account of workers aptitude for the task in hand and change the workers if necessary.
Revise the standards if they are set poorly. This can be done by utilizing QC circle activities, forming teams including front-line workers and listening to their opinions, collecting and analyzing data, performing careful observations and carrying out factory experiments.
Modify the objectives and targets. Standards are not the only things that need revision; objectives and targets are also sometimes wrong. In this case, sufficient data should be collected and one should reconsider whether the objectives and targets are correct or not, and raise them if necessary.

In this way, to eliminate the causes of abnormalities in working process and help the work to be performed as according to the set standard, everybody concerned in the company must understand the philosophy of ‘control’ described above and work together to ferret out the root causes and find methods of dealing with them successfully as done by Japanese companies.

Based on AOTs training course.