paradigm shift - human-centered design...this chronicle describes a journey of discovery of one...

Paradigm Shift

Japanese Manufacturing Study Mission

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LEARNING TO LEARN

"Culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants. Years of study have convinced me that the real job is not to understand foreign culture but to understand our own. I am also convinced that all that one ever gets from studying forelgn culture is a token understanding. The ultimate reason for such study is to learn more about how one's own system works. The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness - an interest in life which can come oniy when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference."

Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language

"I was once asked: 'in a conversation between a fool and a wise man, who learns the most?' Being a teacher at the time. I was quick to think that since the wise man had more to offer, the fool would benefit the most, but then I saw that the opposlte was in fact true. The fool is a fool because he doesn't know how to learn from his experience; the wise man is wise because he does. Therefore the wise man will learn more from the conversation than the fool. Then it became clear to me that if I wasn't learning as much as my tennis students in the course of a lesson, I probably shouldn't be teaching them. This notion gave me an entirely new perspective on teaching. i began paying attention not oniy to backhands and forehands, but to the process of learning itself. It was only because my students taught me something about the learning process that this book could be written."

Tim Gallwey, Inner Game of Tennis

LEARNING TO LEARN 1

PARADIGM SHIFT

We arrived back in Boston safe and sound at Logan Airport on Saturday night. We were all quite tired but glad to be home and looking forward to some friendly greasy food. We sald our last round of goodbyes and then looked for our loved ones for the late ride home.

Sunday was a decompression day and pretty incomprehensible. I have been tired from travelling before but the old body was saying "You've really done It this time."

I think I would have skipped Monday morning If I had any choice but I did not. 1 had a 9:OOAM meeting scheduled in Stowe with a select group that Jerry Paxton, Discrete Manufacturing Marketing VP, had put together to discuss the relevant issues around knowledge based systems' and manufacturing. I was half out of it anyway but when I walked up to the conference room and saw klieg lights and video recording gear all around I was really disoriented.

Luigi DIAngola had surprised all of us and decided to record a brain storming session. He hoped to get some good feedback on tape and also try and use some of the material for a marketing videotape. 1 was not a happy camper.

My journal notes from the meeting record:

"Boy an interesting schizophrenia has set In. I sat in a brainstorming meeting this morning with a bunch of industry marketing folks and had a really difficult time. First I think because of my tiredness I was having a difficult time being positive about anything that was being discussed. But as I would get ready to interact with ?he discussion based on my previous twenty years of experience, and before I could get the thought even half formed, the two weeks experience in Japan came roaring through my consciousness and said 'WAIT A MINUTE!' Check your assumptions that by now BIG VOICE chimed. Most everything that was said during the sessions would cause these internal collisions. This integration of my experiences is going to take quite a lot longer than I thought, but I better do it quick or I am going to go nuts."

I did not think much more about that Monday morning for the next two months, However, I was taken aback by my internal schizophrenia of the collision of new experience with twenty years of thinking only one way. I scheduled several discussions with interested professionals in the Digital marketing and engineering community In hopes that by talking to others I would better understand what I had observed and therefore come to know what I know. Nothing magic happened that I could tell, but several II- festyle changes occurred in quick succession.

PARADIGM SHIFT 3

I made a vow to myself that I had to get my life back In balance. The constant travel and being away from home was hurting my family life and wasn't helping the synergy of my workgroup. So I made a set of promises. No jet plane trips until after September 1, 1987 and I would sleep In my own bed every night during that time.

At work, we spent the summer getting back to basics - establishing personal and group visions and grounding ourself in current reality with our FY87 Business Plan. By focusing on the individual visions first and then, looking for a group overlap, something quite vital happened. For the first time in managing this group of superb professionals, we could each proceed independently with the next steps. I was no longer the bottleneck in having to assign next steps, each individual saw their roadmap and how the other roads would connect with it. Most importantly for the first time in several years, my boss really understood the business plan,

The changes started showing up in my personal life as well. My wife and I signed up for a Marriage Encounter weekend that we attended and rediscovered a love that had gotten buried under work and the raising of children the last several years. I finally took a coworker up on an offer to attend a three night orientation session on Beyond War, an organization aimed at thinking differently about the future of the planet earth. I have not been active in outside organizations since college and here were two that I was Jumping into the middle of. And finally I started actively taking courses from the Institute of Human Evolutlon aimed at how I can create the future that 1 want and how I can focus on what current reality is.

My normal way of learning is to read, study, discuss and intellectualize. Heaven forbid that I would actually participate in developing a skill directly. Yet, here I was jumping in and actually participating, contributing, developing and growing in outside work activities.

It was at the current reality course (called Structural Consulting) that a fellow student helped me click things into place. The afternoon's workshop was to alternate roles between client and consultant practicing a technique of communication called additive picturing. My presenting problem that day was that I was really enjoying the summer and all the things that I was doing to restore the balance in my life but I was real concerned that when September 1 came along that my world was going back to Its previous hectic madness.

As 1 was talking and Pat was picturing what I was saying, she asked me to describe the travelling that I had been doing. The first thing that came out was a description of the Japan trip. While I started talking about the physical tiredness that resulted, quickly I shifted into talking about the mental shift that had occurred on the trip. I related the phenomenal production machine that the Japanese put together and that it was done by paying attention to people and processes with very little technology applied. Further, I remarked on the congruence of work, play, learning and philosophy that tied all pieces of the Japanese culture together. Specifically I described a bit of the day at the Shinto shrine and then seeing the Shinto symbols so pervasive at Brother Industries the next day. She saw that I was letting out the schizophrenia that the trip caused.

During a lull In my descriptions, Pat asked If I was familiar with the paradigm shift phenomena, particularly the vases and phases illustration. I said "Sure." She then went on "It sounds like you have gone through a paradigm shift as the result of your Japan trip. The pictures that I have formed are of a physical person that went to Japan. and came back the same. To the outside world that physical person hasn't changed. But the mental person that is you changed. You are different inside and those closest to you can't see that internal paradigm shift."

PARADIGM SHIFT 4

As she was talking a release of tension went out of me. She had put her finger on what was bothering me about the events of the summer. I had not been able to find a cause for the events other than my resolution to not travel. Pat Identified that the Japan trip In a sense was the cause; that there was a reason for what was happening and therefore a sense of immense relief that these changes weren't going to evaporate come the first of September.

I don't remember much about the rest of t he day because I was deep in reflection about the implications of the discovery of my paradigm shift. It was clear that the shift occurred, but I still wasn't comfortable about the nature of the shift. On the walk back to the car through Cambridge Park, this last piece clicked into place. It was triggered by a comment that Paul Mantos made on the first day of the trip in Seattle: "Maybe we could be wrong about the appropriate use of technology in manufacturing."

Indeed, maybe I could be wrong about the appropriate use of computers for the progress and improvement in the quality of life of mankind. I have carried around a bed- rock assumption that "Of course, computers are good." I haven't examined or challenged that assumption for over twenty working years.

This chronicle describes a journey of discovery of one man's paradigm shift. The shift is from a focus on complexity to a focus on simplicity. The shift also involves the Inte- gration of work, play, family, learning, and philosophy with each of the parts congruent and reinforcing the whole.

This journey is not at end, but only a beginning. I welcome comments on others insights into their paradigm shifts so that we can get on with the thinking differently required to move us Into a global economy where we recognize that we are part of one world.

Since Japan and particularly the Japanese manufacturing miracle is so constantly in our news media it is easy to assume that we already know what needs to be known. A thought that Is constantly with me was related by Ken McGuire: "The American and Japanese manufacturing methods are ninety per cent the same and yet different In every major respect." It is these differences that this chronicle tries to get at the heart of.

This difference in perspective is similar to that expressed by a terrific Outward Bound Instructor I had the privilege of sailing with years ago: "Bill was bemoaning the Outward Bound change of logo. They used to have a picture of 'our boat' with Hurricane Island underneath. Now they have a big circle type logo with Outward Bound on it. With the old logo people used to always come up and ask him what the T-shirt was about and he would get a chance to explain what it meant to him. Now they see the Outward Bound and just walk away - 'Oh Yeah, I know that that is' - and Bill never gets a chance to explain what it means to him." Experiential Learning.

PARADIGM SHIFT 5

MISSION OBJECTIVE

The Digital study mission to Japan was put together by Paul Mantos and Ed Turcotte of Computer Systems Manufacturing (CSM) under Lou Gaviglia. The mission was the kick- off to the next phase of CSM's journey towards Manufacturing Excellence. Paul contracted with Ken McGuire of MEAC (Manufacturing Excellence Actlon Coalition) to organize and lead the study mission.

The following was the MISSION OBJECTIVE:

To gain an accurate understanding and appreciation of the significant differences between Japanese and US. management approaches to quality and productivity improvement in manufacturing operations. To assesss the techniques and implementation methods in productivity programs, particularly Total Quality Control (TQC) quality improvements and Small Group Improvement Activity (SGIA) worker involvment, and learn of the competitive advantages which result from those efforts. To analyze how the most effective Japanese practices might be applied to improve quality, productivity, and working capital requirements in U.S. operations.

My personal mission objective was:

To gain an understanding of how Japanese management has developed a culture for continuing improvement that combines a balance between creating an idealized future and rapid reactions to changing global economic conditions. To understand the differences in approach to the automation of manufacturing. To develop a working relationship with and an understanding of Digital's manufacturing management.

MISSION OBJECTIVE 7

BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY

CSM had just come off a multi-year effort to make giant strides In manufacturing excellence through the implementation of MRP II and DRP II. The results of this activity are described in several pamplets available from Paul Mantos [[[References]]]

As Paul was trying to recover from several long years of pushing an organization forward, Lou asked Paul to take on the push to the next phase. This middle phase of the CSM Pyramid Roadmap was to get TQC and JIT embedded as part of CSM's culture. We can all imagine Paul's less than enthusiastic response as he got hit with the standard DEC management response to good work - "No good deed shall go unpu- nis hed! "

But Paul had an ace up his sleave that he felt would guarantee that he wouldn't have to participate as the active change agent. "Sure I'll do it, if you will let me do this one like I think it ought to be," stated Paul.

"What does that mean?" replied Lou.

"Well, if we are going to really implement JITTTQC, we need to pull together a committed set of people from the plants. They are the ones that need to make it happen. The best way I know to get them committed and to get them functioning as a team is to lead a series of study missions to Japan. We need to get straight to the source and see what our most worthy competitor is really doing, with our own eyes, ears, and intu- itions, " asserted Paul.

"Ok, go do it," said Lou.

I think I can hear the "Aw shit" still reverberating in Paul's mind. He asked for the moon and he was given it. Such Is the life of a respected change agent.

Through work with APICS. Paul Mantos and Ed Turcotte were aware of Ken McGuire's study missions that he leads to Japan. Since CSM wanted to get going immediately, Ken was contracted to lead the mission and the first mission was on on very short notice.

CSM JOURNEY TO EXCELLENCE

As part of their planning process for the late 1980s the CSM group put together a brochure on their plans for their Journey to excellence. This section excerpts some of the key goals:

BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY 9

[[(The full set can be found in the brochure]]] f

2 MEAC

The brochure developed for our host Japanese companies describes MEAC as:

"MEAC is a coalition of manufacturing professionals dedicated to achieving corporate excellence. The coalition is committed to the belief that achleving manufacturing excellence Is a durable strategy for genulne competitive adavantage. MEAC Is actively In- volved in a continuous search for additional insights in the determinants of superlor manufacturing performance.

"MEAC is committed to the principle that people, not plans, make businesses successful. Manufacturing excellence can only be achieved by people who know what to do, have the will to act, seek to learn from experience, and study to gain understanding from the experiences of others. MEAC, therefore, is dedicated to furthering:

1. Knowledge through awareness; 2. Experience through trial; and 3. Understanding through exchange.

Awareness of "best world practices" in manufacturing management is a necessary first step. It provides foundation for proper assessment and evaluation with potential for adoption or adaptation of the most useful practices.

"Skills can best be developed through experience. Awareness and comprehension of new approaches are not sufficient to guarantee their successful application. Trial and experimentation is the most effective way to understand new approaches. If the concepts are sound, maximum effectiveness will come after repeated trials and futher re- finement and adaptation of the new concept.

"Periodic reflection on personal experience and a regular exchange of ideas with peers is necessary to develop in-depth understanding. Sharing knowledge of new concepts, philosophies, practices, and procedures broadens thelr potential for application.

"MEAC is a resource for seriously committed manufacturing professionals seeking further understanding of the fundamental determinants of manufacturing performance. It serves as a forum for the direct exchange of information between innovators, a transfer medium for the dissemination of knowledge through experiment and trial for the unini- tiated, and as a source of assistance for the committed but inexperienced."

Ken McGuire, MEAC's founder, has led over 12 missions to Japan to study the manufacturing systems. I asked where the name MEAC came from and Ken explained: "Well, when I started this business, I named It Ken McGuire, Inc., which is typically what we do with consulting firms here in the US. But in Japan, I couldn't understand why I was having so much difficulty trying to line up host companies. Then a good Japanese friend took me aside and shared with me that individuals are not emphasized in Japan and that it would be better to have a company name which emphasized the group. Thus was born the MEAC name."


Ken's skills in organizing and leading the trip were superb. Kind of in the same way that you can tell the best umpires in baseball by the fact that you never notice them, I never noticed the logistical and organizational pieces of the trip. Everything came off as scheduled and with no hassles. That is the best tribute I can make to the organization that Ken has put together to facilitate these study missions.

However, Ken's contributions went far beyond the organization of the trip. His decades of manufacturing experience, consulting and educational guidance provlded an atmosphere for learning that is extremely powerful. My test for a good educator Is do they ask good, demanding questions of their audience or students. For me It is the questions that ere important not the answers. Ken came up with a questioning methodology that is so powerful in its simplicity. After each plant visit, his structure for the debriefing sessions on the bus were:

What did you see? What didn't you see?

That last question is the one we rarely ask ourselves, yet for me that was the real learning on the trip - it was what I didn't see that stimulated the paradigm shift. These questlons are so close to Grace Murray Hopper's questlons that need to be a fundamental part of any plan, whether for business or for planning a battle:

What is the cost of doing IT? What is the cost of NOT doing IT?


PREPARATION

I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.

- Rudyard Kipling

The success of any effort is in the preparation. In the analog to Digital's marketing message of "Digital Has It Now" we have a company culture that once a decision Is made "let's do it now." As a result of this culture, the mission was scheduled with only three months of preparation instead of the normal six months that MEAC has found beneficial.

The following is taken from A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi:

Timing In Strategy

"There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.

"You win battles with the timing In the Void born of the timing of cunning by knowing the enemies' timing, and thus using a timing which the enemy does not expect.

"All the five books are chiefly concerned with timing. You must train sufficiently to appreciate all this.

"If you practice day and night in the above [chi school strategy, your spirit will naturally broaden. Thus is large scale strategy and the strategy of hand to hand combat propa- gated in the world. This is recorded for the first time In the five books of Ground, Water, Fire, Tradition (Wind), and Void. This is the Way for men who want to learn my strategy:

1. Do not think dishonestly.

PREPARATION 13

The Way is in training. Become acquainted with every art. Know the Ways of all professions. Distinguish between gain and loss in woldly matters. Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything. Perceive those things which cannot be seen. Pay attention even to trifles.

r

Do nothing which is of no use. '

"It is important to start by setting these broad principles in your heart, and train in the Way of strategy. If you do not look at things on a large scale it will be difficult for you to master strategy. If you learn and attaln this strategy you will never lose even to twenty or thirty enemies. More than anything to start with you must set your heart on strategy and earnestly.stick to the Way. You will come to be able to actually beat men in fights, and to be able to win with your eye. Also by training you will be able to feely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat ten men with your spirit. When you have reached this point, will It not mean tha you are invincible?

"Moreover, in large scale strategy the superior man will manage many subordinates dextrously, bear himslef correctly, govern the country and foster the people, thus pre- serving the ruler's discipline. If there Is a Way Involving the spirit of not being defeated, to help oneself and gain hohour, it is the Way of strategy."

LINING UP THE COMPANIES

The critical part of the mission was the lining up of a representative set of excellent Japanese companies. The decision was made early on to have a mixture of companies that MEAC has used and a set of key Digital suppliers or customers.

Ed Turcotte and Ken McGuire journeyed to Japan for a very quick week of meetings to get a feeling for what companies would provide the best education. Mr. Nagamine from Digital Japan was instrumental in setting up visits with DEC's key suppliers.

As we learned on the trip the hosting of a mission involves a lot of time on the part of Japanese companies and is not taken lightly. In some cases we would not be able to get into companies that Ken has used before (like IBM Japan) and several of our competitor companies politely refused. Although in the latter case, if Bill Demmer would have been along they would have gladly accepted in order to have the honor of hosting someone whose accomplishments they greatly respect.

The final list of companies represented an excellent mix:

Canon Copier Factory Ricoh Copier and Laser Printer Factories Toshiba Computer Peripherals Factory Tokyo Juki Sewing Machine Factory Matsushita Electric TV Factory Honda Motorcycle Factory Brother Typewriter and Sewing Machine Factory Tokyo Electric Printer and Laser Printer Factory Hitachi IBM Mainframe Factory Nissan Automobile Factory

PREPARATION 14

Sumitomo Trading Company

The missing Ilnk In the trip was to get a look at the second and third tier supplier companies, but that will have to wait for a future trip.

To aid our host companies in preparing for our visit a brochure was prepared. The brochure included all of our pictures and titles, our mission objectives and backgrounds, and a sample of the areas for discussion and sample questions. On the left facing page was the text in English while on the right facing page was the Japanese translation.

A key commitment once we signed up for the trip is that we would have to make it, so that there would be no embarrassment due to a person and picture not matching up between the brochure and the actual mission particlpants.

2 SELECTING THE PARTICIPANTS

The quality of a learning experience is in direct proportion to the quality and breadth of the study team members. The initial hopes for the mission were that It would be com- prised of the members of Lou Gaviglia's staff wlth a high proportion of plant managers. Since the planning period was so short it was difficult to set a date which matched everyone's schedule.

Thus second and third choices for participation were accepted. Ed Turcotte had the difficult task of selecting and gaining everyone's commitments.

As for this trip I feel quite lucky to be included and still marvel that the opportunity seemed to drop out of the heavens. I was certainly odd person out as the only non- manufacturing person on the trip.

I first heard about the opportunity from Joan Coulson, a Manufacturing Corporate Account Manager for Boeing. She was so excited about being selected and her enthusiasm bubbled all the way through the line from Seattle, WA to Merrimack, NH. When she finished, I related how much I have studied the Japanese over the last several years and would be particularly interested in her observations. For the last 18 months 1 headed up a joint development effort between Digital and National Semiconductor to build an automated production facility for the assembly and packaging of semiconductor devices. A key design constraint of the system was that we had to go the next step beyond Japanese methodologies in order to become competitive again. I was beginning to have my doubts that the design team really understood the Japanese methods and that we were really going a step beyond.

Joan suggested that instead of waiting to hear her observations that I ought to contact Ed Turcotte and see if there was space left on the study mission. So I began about two weeks worth of ping-pong phone calls trying to catch up with Ed. As each day went by, I assumed that my chances were becoming nill.

When finally 1 caught up with Ed, he asked why I was interested in going on the mission, i went through the above reasons and also the fact that the organization I work for, Software Services, derives over 5O0/0 of its business from providing custom solutions to the manufacturing market. If we were going to succeed as an organization, we needed to understand how to better serve our customers in the United States. I was dumbstruck by Ed's response "OK. We would like to have you along, but you have to commit to going now. We can't have you backing out at the last minute."

PREPARATION 15

Gifts like this just don't happen.

As payment for Ed and CSM's having me, I committed to turning out a chronicle of the journey of discovery that the study group would make.

PRELIMINARY STUDY

The emphasis for this trip was definitely on the word STUDY. How rarely we get a chance to actually study, reflect and observe what is going on around us. It is rare enough when we find time as an individual to do the study, but it is close to impossible to gather a group of peers from the same company culture to study in concert.

I was in hog heaven when the study materials started arriving. I was actually being sent books and articles; I did not have to go looking for them. I was bound and determined that not only was I going to get through the basics but also the recommended list. But then the real world raised up its ugly head and said "Nice try, son" as I still had quite a bit of that managerial stuff to do before leaving. Not the least of which was preparing and giving a seminar to a Seybold Executive Forum the day before leaving for Seattle.

I was pleased though that I got through all the books and most of the articles before the trip, so that all I had left was a few of the articles to read on the plane trip to Seattle. I don't know that the order of the reading is all that important, but having just finished a photo reading course which suggests getting an overview of the context and suggesting a methodology for a given book, I decided to employ that methodology for absorbing a series of readings.

I figured that I would start and end with a McGuire book. So to establish a context for the reading, I started with Conlinuous Improvement, a report on a previous MEAC study mission. I then wanted some insights into more of the cultural aspects so I read The Japanese Mind. I was then ready to tackle Kaisha. Since I had heard that Vogel's book Japan as Number 1 was the most difficult to read, I saved that for next to last. Then I finished up with Impressions from our Most Worthy Competitor.

Then came the selection of reprints that arrived in three weekly batches:

[[[Fill in the notes from Ken's Letters]]]

As a last stop in a Seattle bookstore, I just had to take some books with me for the plane rides and for the hotel rooms when I couldn't sleep because of the time zone differences. I picked up Edward T. Hall's The Silent Language and Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Both of these books have been on my acquire list for quite a while and it was nice to finally find them. Little did I know how appropriate they would be for reading in parallel with the experiential learning of the study mission. An additional book that was quite helpful for getting an insight into the Japanese mindset was the book on Buddhism that was in our hotel rooms on the trip, like a Gideon Bible would be here in the states.

A sample from the book on Buddhism is the formula for those people who master various skills, crafts, and professions or seek some understanding of their own nature and the meaning of the universe:

PREPARATION 16

"Such knowledge and opinions, if thoroughly mastered, will lead inevitably to certain ends and produce certain results in one's life. The Enlightened One Is aware of all these possible consequences, and also of what lies behind them. But he does not attach much importance to this knowledge. For within himself he fosters another knowledge - the knowledge of cessation, of the discontinuance of worldly existence, of utter repose by emancipation. He has perfect insight into the manner of the springing into existence of our sensations and feelings, and into the manner of their vanishing again with all their sweetness and bitterness, and into the way of escape from them altogether, and into the manner in which, by non-attachment to them through right knowledge of their character, he has himself won release from their spell."

As I went through each of the books, I underlined and made notes on those points which struck home with my own experience. The notes were of two types: direct relationship to my own experience or questions that were raised. The following section is a partial list of the sections of the readings which triggered a response and the relationship or question that was formed.

"Management influence is also different from what we are used to in the US. In every case, upon questioning, it is made emphatically clear that the small groups choose their won themes and that management takes no role in approving or disapproving the choices, provided the themes conform to company goals and priorities. Instead, ma- nagmenet communicates the broad areas that are of most immediate concern to the company and identifies the factors they believe contribute most to the potential problem." Continuous Improvement, p. 16. This passage sounds quite similar to the management structure that Broken Hill Properties of Australia has implemented in conjunction with Elliott Jacques notion of Stratified System Theory presented in The Form of Time.

Question: How do we get each level of an organization to actually work at Its level Instead of focusing all responsibility at the core? What are the appropriate PRINCIPLES senior management should establish to create the above environment?

"These twelve-hour days, coupled with the intensity of a multitude of brand-new impressions in an alien culture, produce a level of fatigue that may have shut down some of the rationalization processes that usually go on." Continuous Improvement, p. 17.

Question: What is it about this study process that does work that I have not ever been able to create within the confines of the normal work environment? I have seen the power of this in the Outward Bound experience [Walter, 19861 and in the trip to Germany the Odyssey design group made.

"'When you're fishing, you must have your hook at the right level all the time. If you place your hook too close to the fish, they will swim away; if you put it too far away, they will not be tempted by it. Therefore, we must follow the procedure of always keeping the hook close to the fish. If we want to raise the level, we must do it one step at a time.' This metaphor illustrates the importance of taking small, practical steps in any conversion process involving people." Continuous Improvement, p. 24.

Question: Why do we in the West seem to only have one change process up our sleeve which is to save up all the changes and hit them with the big atomic truth?

"He notes the Japanese emphasis on forms and ceremonies, and the tendency to follow the specific patterns of behavior prescribed for various social or business roles." Continous Improvement, p. 28.

Question: How are new patterns and forms introduced Into Japanese society?

PREPARATION 17

"Also, effective Total Productive Maintenance becomes a critical focus: how to achieve it Is now more obvious. With the quality a non-problem, process knowledge Improves and Is translated Into process reliability. Then process automation becomes a simpler, less expensive task." Continuous lmprovement p. 65. This sounds like John Shebell's talk on the approach that IBM has taken to Improving the behavioral aspects of reliability on its mainframes.

Question: I am beginning to get the feeling that a lot of the JlTRQC methods can be applied to engineering (particularly software) and major programs within large companies. Can we start building up the analogs?

"Another requirement is recognition that traditional measurements must be suppressed in favor of performance measurements that focus on the overall health and growth of the company. Valid and quantifiable indicators of superior performance are: 1) quality, 2) the satisfaction of the customer, 3) the competence and growth of the people assets, 4) the capacity of the organization to respond to opportunity, and 5) the ability of the company to master technology. Measurements must be valid, consistent and fair. They must reward those who try to make the process work. The emphasis must be on rate of progress over a sufficient time frame to ensure continuity of direction." Continuous lmprovement p. 70.

Question: How do we get visions for each of the above along with visible and understandable metrics? These metrics seem to be absent, particularly the rate metrics, In any of the organizations I have been a part of.

Question: Will we be able to trace a customer complaint in any of the above companies? I remember Bob Howell's experience in buying a Japanese garden tractor that didn't work. The firm sent three engineers from Japan to study Bob's environment and the tractor and find out exactly what the problem was. This was an Impressive response and sure disposed Bob to buying Japanese from that point forward.

"Amadea Co is engaged in development and sales as well as overall business control. Total solutions to metalworking problems in manufacturing can be addressed and solved here at the company's machine tool plaza. The company is a leader in the field of metalworking machinery, with a growing emphasis on Flexible Manufacturing Systems. This location provides customer access to all types of tools which can be used in forming solutions. CAD/CAM, inspection equipment, and even a library of theo- retical and practical information is available. Beyond that, technical classes are conducted both before and after a customer buys from Amada." Continuous Improvement p. 94.

Question: Is this a good model for what the ACTS (Application Centers for Technology) should be? If CSM plants get the JiTKQC realy moving how do we tie their centers of excellence into the ACT program?

"It also seems possible that by easing some of the constraints under which Japan now labors, informatization will have even more dramatic impact on the life-stype and psyche of the Japanese people than upon those of the American people. 'Once the informatlon society has arrived, ' an executive of a big trade association told me, 'we Japanese won't have to live all huddled together in cramped little city apartments and houses. And we won't be so dependent on imported fuel either, because we won't have to waste so much of it on commuting." The Japanese Mind p.209.

Question: Will Japan be the first telecommunting society? What are the factors that might cause such a response in the US? Can we model the scenarios that need to take place in Japan and the US for the Information Society to take hold?

PREPARATION 18

"'As I see it,' says Nukazawa, 'the United States will still be a bigger power than Japan in every sense twenty years from now and we will still be ultimately dependent on you for our survival. But because we will be so advanced technologically you will also be dependent upon us for some crucial elements of your miliarty power - microcircuitry or whatever the newest thing will be by then. And that's precisely what the releationship between our two countries ought to be: mutual dependence for mutual survival?" The Japanese Mind p. 308.

f,

"In the view of Japanese leaders, raising Japan's military expenses above the level of one percent of its GNP would not appreciably increase security. They see maintaining good relations with other countries to .guarantee the flow of natural resources as more important for national security than military weaponry. In a sense Japan's military policy is a bold enterprise, an effort to be the only major power that is not a major military power. It is a boldness that has high payoff, direct and indirect, for the private sector." Japan as Number One p. 68.

Question: Is Japan's strategy for aid to other nation's much better than ours? Instead of our strategy which is to give farm aid and military aid Japan is "reluctantly" aiding the rest of the world with economic means (factory and technology loans), thereby further increasing an economic dominance in the global market.

"For a company to establish a 'winner's competitive cycle' it must grow faster than its competitors. This means that the company must increase its market share so that its volume of business will increase at a rate greater than that of its competitors. A superior rate of increase Is achieved by increased Investment. Increased investment can have many forms including price cutting, capacity expansion, advertising, or product development. Once a superior rate of increase is established, a virtuous cycle begins: with increased volume, relative to competitors' volume, comes decreased costs. With decreased costs comes increased profitability and financial strength. More cash is available internally and from external sources to fund growth. This cash is then reinvested in the business in ways that will yield further increases of market share and a replay of the winning cycle. Failure to establish and maintain this cycle results in the loss of competitive position over time and ultimately a withdrawal from or major redirection of, the business." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 42.

Question: Why don't we see more of this cycle in the US? Has anyone ever done serious modelling of this phenomena particularly in conjunction with TQC?

"Several patterns have consistenly characterized the Japanese penetration of Western markets. First, the product will have already been used in large volumes in Japan. Second, exports of the product accelerate only after domestic demand slows. The growth oriented kaisha will quickly seek additional sales volume to offset maturing domestic business by expanding exports. Japanese producers have been successful in the West where two additional factors have been present - factor cost advantage and a labor productivity advantage. . . As the number of steps In the manufacturing process increases, the ratio of total factory labor content of the US factories increases relative to the Japanese factory." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 60.

Question: When does software and centralized value added services get hit with this phenomena? Can we look at our software labor Increases over the last seven years and begin to project a flexion point? What is the status of the Sigma Network for Japanese software manufacturing?

PREPARATION 19

"Much of the Japanese productivity advantage in high coordination manufacturing operations can be attributed to these systems (JIT, etc). The opportunity for the Japanese to achieve a productivity advantage In simple or continuous processes is llmlted because the coordination of operations is much simpler, involves balancing machinery rather than people, and does not change many times each day as the production mix changes. " KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 63.

Questlon: Is our key advantage in the Odyssey,project with National Semiconductor the fact that we are better able to balance machinery and automation in a flexible system? If we look at large projects or programs vs small projects it is the coordination function which gets to be enormours. What can we learn from the Japanese coordination system that can be applied to software development?

"The challenge in manufacturing management has been to balance the desires of the production management to limit the variety of products produced with the desires of the marketing management to give customers whatever they want immediately. The balance cannot be achieved in isolation; it must reflect the approach and capabilities of compe- titiors." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 80.

Questlon: How do we get better acknowledgement of this balance at all levels of an organization? It seems to me that by the time something like the circular organization technique comes together to overlap a functional organization it Is too far away from the people that could interact to achleve the above balance. Is Jon Wettstein the model for the plant manager of the future - a combination of financial, marketing, and manufacturing backgrounds (be nice if he had a little services background in their somewhere too)?

"The more difficult it is to predict demand the more attractive level scheduling is. . . With JIT the entire factory is more, not less, flexible, and JIT is a more suitable production system to an environment in which demand is uncertain. The Japanese have cho- sen not to take full advantage of this characteristic of JIT but, as indicated by reducing the period in which the schedule is frozen, the situation is changing." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 1 1 1.

Question: Is this where our closeness to our own market and our investment in MRP II will give us the advantage? This section correlates with Goldratt's remedy for Western manufacturing in The Goal and The Race.

"The Japanese go to school one-third more time than do Americans every year; over 12 years, they have had four more years of schoole. They can accomodate a more accelerated curriculum." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p 133.

COMMENT: This fact was the single biggest shocker in the whole prestudy area. No wonder we are falling behind so quickly. Particularly when the above extended school time is combined with the tutoring that goes on for the top students.

"The key to any successful business strategy is influencing the behavio; and plans of one's competitor. A few years ago, by aggressive investment and marketing, Kodak might well have been able to stop Fuji while Fuji was still relatively weak. Kodak can no longer stop Fuji, but it might be able to deflect Fuji's energies, exercise some control over Fuji's cash flow, and bring its still considerable strengths to bear against this key competitor. In one sense what has happened to Kodak, does not matter: companies comae and go. In another sense, the Kodak case matters very much indeed for it is a microcosm of the failures of U.S. and European companies to deal with the competitive threat that Japan's kaisha pose. If the Western best do not respond, what then of Western economies as a whole?" KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 240.

PREPARATION 20

Question: Do we even know where are competitors of the future are today and how we can expect them to compete in the future?

'Few forelgn firms are prepared even to acknowledge the value of acquired technology. Most technology evaluation is in the hands of technicians with a 'not-invented-here' bias, rather than business executives who are seeking competitive opportunities. The lesson from the kaisha is that these attitudes are costly and inefficient, that technological arrogance is an expensive luxury, and techflological complacency is an unwarranted weakness." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 277.

Question: How do we transform this attitude and get the business and technology view when evaluating developing technologies? This frustration in dealing with DEC and several other companies viewing the Odyssey pilot line venture was so incredibly painful. The technologists all were smug and said we can do better. The business people all said this is too complicated I can't understand It, my technology people will evaluate it. Nice loop. How do we get people over their fear of learning?

"T. Sekimoto, president of NEC, offers the startling prediction that by the end of the century more than 5 million Japanese workers will be employed in software related jobs. That is equivalent to nearly 10 percent of Japan's entire labor force today. Far from lessening employment, the thrust of the kaisha into microelectronics has, as industrial revolutions always have, created employment. . . This shift toward an emphasis on design, systems formulations, and new products in Japan, with manufacture shifting off shore, will be accelerated by the inevitable expansion of the service sector." KAISHA: The Japanese Corporation p. 279.

Question: How can we tie into and participate in this expansion into the software end, particularly if we take the view that there will be a shortage of programmers as more and more products turn toward software for their flexibility?

"It is perhaps understandable that the Japanese, in the habit of looking abroad for things to learn, continue studying, while Americans in the world of affairs, in the habit of teaching the rest of the world, find it difficult to assume the posture of the student, even when such indifference to or casual dismissal of foreign success blinds us to useful lessons." Japan as Number One p. 4.

Question: How do we achieve a balance here particularly in light of Ackoff's notion that the best way to learn is to teach? I think what Vogel had in mind is that we are used to preaching, not teaching any longer.

"Information gathering is not an end in itself. It is a group-directed process closely linked to long-range organizational purposes, permitting an impressive range of information to be concentrated where and when the organization can best use it. . . Japanese loyalty and patriotism are not Inherited but are constantly recreated by organizational practice, and perhaps no practice is more important than the shared search for more information and the optimal solutions to which it leads." Japan as Number One p. 51.

Question: How do we start to employ this fantastic Easynet network we have as a strategic information gathering mechanism much in the way that the sogo shosha do? I think we have significant advantage through the use of the peer-to-peer nature of our network but it is somehow missing the strategic intelligence function that routinely syn- thesizes and distributes the results.

'MITl's aim is not to reduce competition among Japanese companies but to create the strongest possible companies with the greatest competitive potential. Perhaps the nea- rest American analogy is the National Football League or the National basketball

PREPARATION 21

Association. League officials establish rules about size of team, recruitment, and rules of play that result in relatively equally matched teams of great competitive abilities. They do not interfere In Internal team activity or tell a coach how to run his team, although they do try to provide information that would enable the coach to improve." Japan as Number One p. 72.

Question: How do we start moving to a synergy between business, government, education, and entertainment instead of each of these being mutually exclusive and adversa- rial?

"A number of Japanese private railway companies compete with the national service in regions where there are large numbers of commuters. The Ministry of Transport helped plan these regional systems, which are parallel in organization and purpose. The same company owns not only the individual railroad but real estate along the route, a department store, and sometimes hotels located at the main terminal. The company is profitable, even it It loses money on the running of the passenger line, because of the many passengers it carriesfrom outlying areas to the main terminal where the department store is located." Japan as Number One p. 80.

Question: How do we get better at understanding what business we are in and the synergies of the various pieces and then pass these principals on to our customers? If you can't easily distribute your product then the above example illustrates the dlstribu- tion of people? If you can distribute your product, then don't distribute the people (the telecommuting society)?

"In short the bureaucratic elite neither reign nor rule but conceive, discuss, persuade. encourage." Japan as Number One p. 84.

Question: Is this an appropriate definition of a staff function and of the System Four of Beer's Viable Systems Model?

"Keidanren is, of course, criticized in the press for pushing the interests of big business while slighting the interests of small business and the public at large. To be sure, Keidanren officials do pursue the interests of big business and do so vigorously, but the top leaders are themselves convinced that they are moved by broader goals. They achieve fame and wealth in their own company many years before assuming leadership in Keidanren, and once there, they see themselves as playing a grander role as business statesmen, with visions benefiting all Japanese. When these leaders of the business community first began to meet with businessmen from the United States, many confidentially expressed surprise at the extent to which American businesssmen thought only of their own company and were ill-prepared to consider business problems from a broader perspective, let alone negotiate agreements on complex issues. Many senior American business leaders have been impressed with the statemanship of their Japanese counterparts like Keidanren leader Taizo Ishizaka. Many of these senior leaders have not only a broad training in European history and literature, Chinese classics, Japanese history, Marxist and 'modern' economics but a bold vision for the future and an overarching philosophy." Japan as Number One p. 114.

Question: Is Japan the first society to have institutionalized Elliott Jacques Stratified System Theory by building in a path for higher echelon SST people to keep them moving up the path towards wisdom?

"Earlier generations of Western social scientists like Durkheim and Parsons thought that occupational specialty could provide the means for integrating the individual In modern society. However, the pace of modern technological and organizational change renders occupation specialty training too rapidly outdated to provide a stable source of

PREPARATION 22

life-long identification and basic social integration for the society. No structure in the West compares with the Japanese firm In its capacity to introduce rapid change and to provide identification for a substantial portion of the population. the young American employee hired as a specialist Is not Interested in learning as broad a range of things about the company as the young Japanese employee, who is more of a generalist. A Japanese employee who knows he will be kept and retrained in midcareer is less likely to worry about innovation and resist technologibal change. Featherbedding and the re- luctance of American workers to be flexible in performing various jobs in a company are problems for American industry not only because workers are afraid of losing their jobs but because they want to protect their skill level, . . The large modern Japanese company is committed to the whole individual, not simply to the task-related part of the Individual." Japan as Number One p. 151.

Question: There is a key here somewhere; what is the appropriate societal metaphor for the meaning of work !hat achieves the highest level of harmony and quality of life: occupation, firm, industry, region, nationality . . .?

"In the 1960s as Japanese production was catching up with world levels, politicians began to talk of the need for more expenditures on social benefits to balance economic growth. Fashionable speakers replaced the term 'gross national product' with 'net national welfare' in order to show they were not narrow economic animals but were concerned with the quality of life." Japan as Number One p. 185.

Question: Could Digital sponsor both a personal net quality of life and a net national quality of life metric as a way of promoting the switch of focus from standard of living to quality of life?

"Americans are peculiarly receptive to any explanation of Japan's economic performance which avoids acknowledging Japan's superior competitiveness. It is easier to accept such explanations as Japan's industrial plants were devastated by a world war, and it could therefore build modern facilities; Japan copied Western technology; Japanese companies undersell American ones because they dump goods; Japanese companies succeed because they are subsidized and protected by their government; Japanese wokers receive low salaries; Japanese companies exporting to the United States violate antitrust and customs regulations." Japan as Number One p. 225.

Question: How do we get so myopic and good at denying current reality and rationaliz- ing away our lack of competitive fires?

"As Japanese companies gain larger shares of international markets from American companies, American companies become less profitable. As the Boston Consulting Group has shown, a company with a large market share is able to sell enough to make considerable profit, to keep up research expenses, and to modernize facilities. But American companies with declining market shares will not make enough profit to finance continued research and modernization, and they will lose even more of the market, caught in a vicious circle." Japan as Number One p. 228

Question: In a sense is this the economic equivalent of Deming's quality is free notion? Market share is free?

"The first generation of industrialists in Europe acquired their skills through their own experiences, but the first generation of industrialists in Japan spent many years in tr'ain- ing programs acquiring the experience of others. . .Japan is a late modernizer with a particular set of institutions designed for rapid catching up?

PREPARATION 23

Question: What happens to a set of institutions based on a vision of catching up or achieving parity that then becomes the world leader? Does the same Institution work or Is it time for an Idealized design to cut in? Can we look at consensus as a group mind without getting Into the notion of group think?

"So much of the writing about the Japanese manufacturing system is concentrated on techniques, policies, and procedures that one truly important aspect has been often overlooked. One fact we must come to accept is that the Japanese people are incredibly good in a much broader dimension than lhey have been given credit for. Their superior performance in the manufacturing arena is just one demonstration of the diverse talent that exists in the Japanese people." Impressions from our Most Worthy Competitor p. 30.

"Through all the years he had wandered adrift in the West, he had carried with him three spiritual sea anchors: the Go bowls that symbolized his affection for his foster father, the faded letter that symbolized the Japanese spirit, and his garden - not the garden they had destroyed, but the idea of garden in Hel's mind of which that plot had been an imperfect statement. With these three things, he felt fortunate and rich." Shibumi p. 439.

Question: How does a sense of philosophy and epistemology and aesthetics get back into our work world? Somehow these concepts got lost in the machine age mechanistic view of the world in the West.

"The strategies which result from the 'optimum quality through efficiency' premise places emphasis on goods production as a process. Concentration on production as a single conversion process from raw material into finished goods places a high degree of emphasis on production flow as a natural consequence. . . When the process is refined, other resources such as energy become the focal point. Every resource is treated as scarce and managed accordingly." Impressions from our Most Worthy Competitor p. 42.

Question: Is this notion similar to Paul Straussman's value added management conversion process or to Michael Porter's value chain for competitive analysis?

"Not enough can be said for the presence of a people-developing, versus a people- using, strategy in the Japanese factories. Cross-training in many skills is commonplace . . . There is a general trust that management would never exert detrimental, arbitrary, or capricious actions on the workforce. This trust Is built into the everyday actions of the company, not in slogans occasionally put on the walls in posters. The trust is present and real to all because it involves them in addressing their own familiar problems. The efforts companies undertake to educate their employees in problem solving methodology builds the capacity to deal with work environment problems. This capability Is an investment in the resources necessary to effectively address a changing environment of products and technology." Impressions from our Most Worthy Competitor p. 50.

Question: As we examine so many of the trends in all of the reading, are we really reaching the point where the primary function of the corporation is for continous education as the foundation for continuous improvement? Is learning to learn the foundation for the future?

"This joint imperative to meet the plan exactly carries a counterbalancing Imperative to do the planning well?" Impressions h m our Most Worthy Competitor p. 67

Question: Is this the central equation for the balancing of MRP II with JITITQC?

PREPARATION 24

As I look through these questions and reflect on the study material that was available to us before the trip, what stands out is that there is no black or white to what I have viewed as the Japanese economic miracle. It seems there are lots of llttle things plled on top of each other and all working synergistically. My personal mission for the trip should be to try and find the underlying principles or model of how this island nation works. Yet, thinking about Hall's comments on culture, the mission should be more to expose the assumptions about our own model that are obscuring how our system really works.

In describing, my excitement at going to Japan to experience the culture, I was surprised at some of the negative reactions. "You are going to consort with the enemy." "Don't you understand that we've got to bury them, before they bury us!" "What could you possibly learn from them? They have such a different culture; their methods will only work for them." There was a real sense of hatred for this enemyfally of ours, particularly by those that were alive or participated in World War II or who had been ad- versely affected by the Japanese manufacturing miracle. Yet, underneath none of those who expressed these feelings had ever been to Japan or had ever known a Japanese. We often put on filters and masks which then cause us to create negative experiences which leads us in to victim mode. These comments and discussions reminded me a lot of a modern day version of the story of Jonah:

"Hi. I'd like to share with you the story of Jonah. Jonah is the guy who lives in the Bible, about halfway between Elijah and Luke. A lot of you probably think Jonah Is the story of a man and his whale. That's not actually true. Jonah is the story about the joy of hatred. Jonah is the story about that exhilarating feeling you get when you discover someone who is really morally more reprehensible than you are. Jonah discovered that joy, and Jonah's basic thing was hating Ninevites. Ninevites lived far away from him, and he'd never met any of them, but he had a lot of data about them.

"Now, hating Ninevites was not like hating Jews, Catholics, Black people, etc. Hating Ninevites was like hating American Nazis, builders of nuclear reactors, and tuna fisher- men. It was a rational, well-researched hatred based on the actual behavior of the hatees. Jonah had a lot of data on Ninevites, and he was building a career on them. He had just had a story about the relationship of Ninevites, the Mobil Oil Corporation, and saccharin on the cover of "Mother Jones". He was hitting the junior college circuit with a speech about Ninevites, and he was hoping to make the Ivy League soon.

"So he was not surprised when one day God came to him to talk to hlm about the Ninevites, He had never spoken to God before, and he wasn't really a God groupie, but he figured God knew who the expert was, right? So God came to Jonah, and said. "Jonah, I'm going to destroy all the Ninevites." And Jonah said, "Wow, you must have read my article." And God said, "Before I destroy them I want to warn them. It seems only fair. Since you know so much about them, I want you to go to Nineveh and tell them I'm going to destroy them, so they'll have a chance to change their ways and save themselves." And Jonah said, "No way in hell. I don't want to go there, they're creepy people, and besides that, what if they change?" So Jonah took off. He took the Greyhound bus to the most distant point available, only it wasn't a Greyhound bus at that point in time, it was a boat. He got on the boat, and thought he would skip town, and all would be cool. He did not know he was dealing with a Whole Earth God.

"God followed him in the boat and started a very large sea storm. The captain of the boat was extremely upset about the sea storm. He was an experienced captain who knew a theological sea storm when he saw it. So he said, "Someone on this boat is not on speaking terms with God. Let's draw lots and see who." Jonah said, "Ah, we

PREPARATION 25

don't need to do that, I'm the one, I'll jump overboard because it seems like the only way that I'm going to win." Now it turned out that God knew, as well as any civil rights legislator knows, that the only way to overcome hatred Is wlth brute force. And God doesn't give up easy. So when Jonah jumped over the side of the boat, God had a whale there to catch him. Jonah landed in the whale, stayed In the whale with the rotting fish and the whale digestive juices for three days. Jonah was a stubborn man of principle - It took seventy-two hours of an unusual smell for him to change his mind, but finally he said, "Oh heck, God, I'll go to Nineveh." So the whale barfed him up on shore near Nineveh and he headed for the work capital of badness.

"Now, when he got to Nineveh, he was pleased to see that everything that he'd ever thought about Nineveh was true. I mean they were right there on the streets using sweat shop labor to run a nuclear reactor that powered an ITT plant that made neutron bombs, whale trawlers, and saccharin. He was naturally appalled. So he got Into his street-beggar mode, which he had once used to support his Ninevite research, and he started saying things in a way that not very many people would hear them. He shuffled down the street, leaned against the walls and muttered, "Repent. Repent. In forty days you will be destroyed if you don't repent." You had to be walking right by him to hear him but the very first person who happened to walk by him happened to be bored wlth his job as a nuclear reactor janitor and he said, "Wow, you're right, this is really awful, let's all repent."

"And that guy started yelling Jonah's message and It turned out that a lot of people were bored with their jobs as neutron bombardiers and saccharin cane cutters and they went to the president of the country and said, "We've been gross and awful, and we're going to repent and you have to, too." They put on sackcloth and ashes, they turned their nuclear reactor into a solar generator and they all planted organic gardens and Jonah was "pissed". He was just furious and he said, "OK, God, are you gonna be conned by these hypocrites, do you think that just because they're behaving different they're better?" And God said, "'Fraid so. Behavior counts. You lose."

"So Jonah stomped to a hill outside of town and sat under a tree praying for the Ninevites to show their true nature and for God to fry them alive. And all that happened was that God destroyed the tree Jonah was sitting under so he got a sunburn. Jonah said, "God, how come you destroyed this tree? This tree never did nothing." He did a ten minute rap about the tree and how trees are important and you can't just destroy them for no reason. And God said, "How come, Jonah, how come, wherefore why is it, that you care so much about that tree, when you have no pity at all for Nineveh, a city that has a whole lot of folks in it, and some children and animals and you wanted me to kill them all? How come you didn't care about them?" And that's the end of the book in the Bible. You're left there with the question. You never know what Jonah said. And you find out the question is for you. What are you going to do? Can you live without hatred?" The Best of Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly

PREPARATION 26

STRUCTURE FOR LEARNING

The study mission had three levels of learning structure:

Micro - plant Tours Macro - Study Mission Meta - CSM Journey to Manufacturing Excellence

At the Microstructure Level, the learning structure was designed to develop observation skills and to promote rapid integration of those ideas which fit our culture.

The macrostrutural level is designed to get a diverse group of professionals to the synergistic performance level very rapidly.

The Study Mission is just one piece of Computer Systems Manufacturing's Metastructure for achieving continuing improvement at all levels of the organization to meet the global challenges of manufacturing excellence.

1 MICROSTRUCTURE - THE PLANT VISIT

The microstructure for the experiential learning of the CSM Japan Study Mission is an adaptation of the Buying Cycle Model which we will term the idea integration model. An outline of the model is:

IDEA INTEGRATION MODEL OUTLINE

Awareness Large Group

Day's Objective Company Background Special Plant Features

Interest Small Group

Formulate Formal Questions Filters for Observing

Investigation Large Group - Company Visit

Formal Welcome Company Overview (generally video) Plant Overview (generally video)

STRUCTURE FOR LEARNING 27

Plant Tour Informal Q & A

Plant Specific Presentation Digital & CSM Presentation Formal Q & A

Insight Acquisition Personal Reflection Large Group: I

What did we see? What didn't we see?

Integration Individual Summary of Plant Visit

Synthesis Small Group Observation Summary

MACROSTRUCTURE - STUDY GROUP DYNAMICS

The art of achieving successful group accomplishment is in understanding the stages of growth of any group. A simple model by which I test the effectiveness of the leader Is does the macrostructure of the experiential learning experience acknowledge these stages:

1. Forming 2. Storming 3. Norming 4. Performing 5. Mourning

First the group comes together and nominal roles are assigned (forming). Then there is a conflict stage as people argue over roles and procedures challenging the nominal leader (storming). Next comes the norming stage as individuals settle Into their roles and acquire the necessary skills. The team moves to the performing stage where the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts (performing). Finally, most teams break up after the task or tasks are accomplished and a mourning stage occurs.

I was bowled over during the course of the study mission at how MEAC organizes activities to facilitate moving a group to the performing stage rapidly. In fact they follow the model so closely that I chose to organize the description of the mission according to the model.

A not so obvious side effect of this model is that whenever a member of a group is added or subtracted, the group returns to the forming stage and must rego through the stages to performing.

Very few groups in most businesses ever get beyond the storming stage. One of the biggest reasons in the U.S. Is that we are constantly adding and subtracting people from formal and informal workgroups with no recognition that we must restart the team building from scratch. No wonder we get so little done in committee meetings as the membership is rarely the same from one meeting to the next.

We were quite fortunate that the group stayed relatively constant throughout the two weeks. While the activites were designed to move the study group rapidly to the performing stage, we did have difficulty in accomodating new members in Japan (primarily


the translators and Mr. Nagamine). I believe this difficulty was due to the lack of formal actlvity to integrate them fully into the study mission.

NOTE: Future study missions which anticipate adding or subtracting study mission members should review the activities to facilitate the integration of the new members.

3 METASTRUCTURE - CREATING CONTINUING

[[[This section will be a debriefing of Paul Mantos and Ed Turcotte on their view of the pursuit of the CSM journey to excellence. What I am quite interested in in this section is the creation of the forum for change that includes but is not limited to the following components:

Formulate the Road Map Empower the Core Groups Continuing education and idea exchange

Plant Seminars Articles

Involve other manufacturing stakeholders Empower and Align the Plants]]]


FORMING

For the month before the trip all kinds of notes would show up in the mail or on the network. While it doesn't seem now like a lot of work, there were several little things that were getting us into the splrit of the mission even before gettlng together.

Ed Turcotte served as the hub of the information network making sure that we all knew what had to be done immediately and forwarding suggestions to all the mission members. Just looking at the distribution lists started to form a sense of groupness.

The tasks were relatively straightforward:

1. Get a black and white passport like photo for the brochure 2. Get twenty business cards 3. Get a brief biography written for the brochure 4. Get a Japanese visa 5. Get gifts.

The only real toughie was figuring out what to bring as gifts. That was what most of the internal mail traffic was about.

While Ed was serving as traffic central, MEAC and their travel agents were doing an excellent job sending us information for the trip and making arrangements to get to Seattle. Gary Eckhart of Simsbury Travel could not have been more accomodatlng as my travel plans changed several times.

I was getting more and more eager every day just with the anticipation of meeting ail the participants and being able to put some names with some faces. I want to be gone, but I keep waiting for the axe to land and say this was all a dream or to have my job reality cut in with some emergency. Have you ever tried to hold your breath for a month?

1 DAY 1: INTRODUCTORY BRIEFING

We all start trickling in to a small conference room at the Seattle Airport Hyatt a little before 3PM on Thursday May 21, 1987. It's a partly cloudy day and the room is kind of dark with the table taking up most of the room and AV equipment and a food service cart occupy most of the remaining space.

FORMING 31

The first order of the day is to squeeze together around the table and I briefly mumble hello to those around me. We get started pretty close to ontime which is amazing for any group I have worked wlth at DEC. After a while you get used to DECtlme (and sometimes even count on It) which is to get a meeting started anywhere from 1/2 hour to an hour late. Not today though, everyone is quietly eager to get started. Little dld I know that we were going to have to do In a day what MEAC usually spends 2 and 112 days doing.

The first thing that we discover is that nobody hom the entire DEC group smokes. This trip is starting off great. It then becomes real easy to establish NO SMOKING as the rule for the trip. Without trying hard, we have our first group consensus.

As I was sitting next to Joan Coulson we chatted briefly before the meeting started. She had just gotten back from a Manufacturing Corporate Account Meeting and she was really touched by an award that Don Hunt had presented her and the other five pioneers that started the MCAM program. She related "What's really fascinating is how much we are respected and the program really appreciates what we have done, and yet none of us would be 'qualified' for this job today." That probably summarized how both of us felt special and lucky belng able to participate in the study mission, knowlng that we probably wouldn't be eligible for participation in future missions.

Paul Mantos begins the session: "Welcome to the first Digital Executive Outplacement Program In Seattle." We get our first taste of Paul's sense of humor which will gra- ciously accompany us for the two weeks.

The first order of business is to get a feel for the presentation that we will be making about this study group and decide which slides we want to keep in and which we don't. The basic presentation can be found in the CSM brochure. What follows Is some notes on the presentation and discussions that accompanied Paul's ' run through of the presentation.

"We have been doing push manufacturing for thirty years and we felt it was time to do it right. THe first step for CSM to do push right was to move to MRP 11. The second step for us is to master JlTlTQC on our journey to CIM. If we can't do It right, then we have to ask ourselves some soul searching questions about the use of computers in manufacturing," stated Paul.

"Since we were successful with MRP 11, we are now basking in our success. It is a terrible time to start introducing JIT though, because our backs are to the wall. DEC's philosopy seems to be to try and hit a home run to solve our problems rather than to hit a steady stream of singles (continuous improvement)."

"This trip is the pioneer trip. The October trip is for the VPs - Gaviglia, Glorioso, BJ."

"Just look at the functions that are represented here - JIT has to involve everyone in the organization. The approach we are taking is to have the quality folks driving the training planning,

"We won't see a lot of computers in Japan, hopefully that is where we can add real value to the process."

"The follow on to these study missions Is to start holding monthly workshops at the different plant sites. We want the plants to share what they are doing and then have the other plants cross-pollinate with the experiments that work," stated Paul.

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It was now time for a rhetorical question. "What do I need from you?" Paul asked. "We are the first round of missionaries to go to the source and come back to the organizations you represent. I would like for each of you to make at least five presentations on the study mission when you get back as a way of spreading the enthusiasm."

Paul then started through the presentation. I was struck by many of the statistics since I had never really paid much attention to how DEC manufacturing was organized. CSM has 5,600 people located in seven plants with some 2.9 million square feet of manufacturing space, [See Figure 1 for an overview of the CSM Roadmap.]

Mike Hasty then observed "It's interesting from the readlng to notice the difference in the way we talk about ourselves and the way the Japanese describe themselves. You are giving a lot of internal metrics, but no market share metrics. They probably know more about us and our market shares and maybe we can get them to tell us."

Class A people seems to be the foundation and key to the CSM journey. Being new to this set of jargon I wonder what the heck a Class A person is. Are these people wandering around with a light blue A on their shirts?

"Are we going to talk about the Digital culture and our manufacturing culture particularly in the area of valuing difference?" asks Lois Greenberg. Discussion starts about how we even present that but no real resolution. We decide to leave it at Class A people and explain more thoroughly if one of the companies asks us a question.

Paul continues "While we are scrambling to do execution, the Japanese are scrambling to do planning. Pull is better than push, but flexibility is what we all should be about. We should do no work until we have to do it."

After Paul finished we went into a discussion mode to see whether this is the presentation that we wanted to give. The discussion centered on keeping the presentation brief and not opening up a lot of acronyms that Japanese courtesy will want to understand. The talk went on for quite a while as this group of folks who didn't know each other was quickly put in a situation of trying to reach a consensus. I made a note to myself that the interaction was like analogy that Mike Weinstein once made about the DEC decision making process:

It's like an important baseball game, say the game at the end of the season between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox to determine which one of the teams is going to go on to the World Series. The score is tied 4-4 in the bonom of the ninth in Fenway Park and there are 35,000 screaming fans in the old ballpark. The Red Sox are at bat; the bases are loaded; there are two outs; and the count is 3 and 2 on the batter. The pitcher pitches and the baner strikes a sharp single to left field. The left fielder charges the ball quickly and makes a rocket throw to home. The ball and the base mnner arrive at home plate simultaneously in a cloud of dust. The crowd is screaming and going nuts. As the cloud of dust settles the umpire leans over and asks the catcher if the mnner was safe or out. The catcher says he was out of course. The umpire then asks the same question of the base runner, who asserts that he was safe of course. The umpire then directs the catcher and the base mnner to go over to the dugout and figure out between themselves whether the runner was safe or out. When they have arrived at their decision they should come back to home plate and announce their decision to the crowd ANNND get the crowd's buyin!

Paul observed that the key point we should get across is that we started the CSM journey around a technology solution - MRP I I . However, the successful results were

FORMING 33

CSM Roadmap

Excellence at Manufacturing

Goal

achieved by the development of CLASS A people. Those people are now really cooking In the plants; it is the middle management that is bogged down. It's the middle management that we are trying to get to wlth these study missions.

When asked why would the Japanese companies host a study mission, Ken McGuire responded "the Japanese are doing what they are doing because DEC is a good customer or a potential good customer. Remember you are representing a very respected company in Japan; you are not just a consumer'-of Japanese retail goods."

Ken then went on to give us an insight into the Japanese competitive mindset, "The Japanese competitive strategy is to always go after the number two company in a market. Get the number two company to give up and they then get a significant market share. Get somebody to quit the battle and you are much better off. Getting the number ten guy in a market to quit and you haven't really gained anything. The Japanese love to bring American companies over to scare the hell out of them."

"Sun Tzu said:

"The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected.

"The art of war is governed by five constant factors, all of which need to be taken Into account. They are: the Moral Law; Heaven; Earth; the Commander; Method and discipline.

"The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.

"Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.

"Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.

"The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage, and strictness.

"By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in Its proper subdivisions, the gradations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. . ,All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable: when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your oppo- nent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

'The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is llkely to win or lose." The Art of War p. 9.

Joan Coulson then asked a question that was covered in the final briefing package. The rest of us had received that package several days earlier but Joan had just received hers as the meeting started. Due primarily to tiredness, Paul snapped back at

FORMING 34

Joan fused intera

that it was in the briefing materials. Al Austin then jumped in and said. "I'm con- now Paul. You asked us for feedback on the presentation, thereby encouraging

ction. Then you jump down Joan's throat. Which mode do you want us in?"

I did internal backflips at that point. Not knowing the skill levels or experience level of a new set of people, I was worried about the kind of educational experience I was going to have on this trip. Al just relieved me of any worries I had coming in. The maturlty level that it takes to respond with a question like Al's and make sure that there is clarity on the outcomes of our interactive sessions is bery high and not often have I had the pleasure of experiencing it with new groups. I now knew that I could relax and that I was dealing with mature professionals.

The next step was for each of us to briefly introduce ourselves and relate any particular expectations or general worries we had about the study mission. The following notes are not meant to be comprehensive but rather are a collection of the comments that stood out to me during the session.

Ken McGuire started off by describing MEAC as a consulting and education firm. He has taken twelve other groups to Japan. Ken pointed out that there were two important roles that would be kept clear with our host companies. Paul Mantos would be our mission leader. Paul officially represents Digital and provides the official statement for our company. Ed Turcotte's role is Program Coordinator and is responsible for the administrative aspects of the trip. Ed's key responsibility is to ensure that learning is taking place.

Ken noted something that I tucked away for future use in our management consulting activity. "It's a lot easier for a consultant to lead a mission to Japan when we are dealing with a multi-company group. Everyone is sensitive to the use of company jargon and tries to make sure that what they are talking about is understandable to the whole group. Therefore it is a lot easier for the leader to ensure that education is really taking place. When everyone is from the same company, it's hard for the leader to sort through the jargon."

Per Johanson is an associate of Ken's in MEAC who is primarily responsible for the education. He was delighted with the complexity and breadth of this group. This breadth will ensure that we will be looking at the plants from very different perspectives.

"I hope to be schizophrenic on this trip," stated Paul Mantos. "With the left eye, I want to see what i see. With the right eye, I want to see what I don't see. I'm terrified that we are going to lose the computer business to the Japanese. It's a gut feeling."

"How do you understand what you can't see?" asked Steve Townsend. "I'm concerned that we won't really see the SGlA and I'm very interested in the management processes and how decisions are made."

Ken replied, "We will see one SGlA in action. They use it as a reward to take a group that has done well and put them in front of a group of international managers such as yourselves. "

Bill Smiley chimed in "I want to look at the processes. I am trying to do high performance work teams and I would like to see how the Japanese do it. I am concerned about JIT all coming together. My concern Is how can we see the management processes and practice which lead to the implementation. How do you get the passion into the organization?"

"We should be focusing more on the HOW!" stated Paul emphatically.

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Mike Doian questioned "That's not so clear to me. I am still concerned about the WHY."

"How do we integrate across functions?" asked Jack Del Brocco as part of his concerns coming into the trip.

"Can you even tell who is from what function when you take a plant tour?" questioned Ken back. "What does the word integration mean from a Human Resource standpoint?"

Joan Coulson volunteered next "I am interested in an understanding of quality across functions - the office, the shop floor 'etc. Even down to a focus on no mistakes in a letter or correspondence. Is there the same kind of urgency for quality within DEC manufacturing? This group will become a catalyst for raising awareness in DEC. Can this group develop a propensity for sharing? My specific interests are in the supply chain networks. What do the Japanese source and where do they source it from? What parts are core and how many suppliers and what kind? How are the supply networks strategi- cally determined?

Steve Townsend commented "If you read enough about the Japanese, you eventually see contradictions. My sense from the reading is that a complacency might be setting in with the Japanese."

"Go into the Seven Elevens and MacDonalds while you are there and observe them. Is it the Seven Eleven that we know or is it a rather clever adoption of a convenience?" asked Ken.

Jack DelBrocco expressed a concern "what is going to be the treatment of the women in the group? There are more and more women managers showing up in manufacturing particularly in the software area."

Lois Greenberg quickly responded "I am more concerned with how the men from DEC will portray the maletfemale relationship to the Japanese."

"I am scared for us as a company in manufacturing and for our society. I want to understand what are our strengths and their vulnerabilities," commented Al Austin.

Ed Sullivan went next "I am excited and pleased to take the study. 1 want first hand experience of Japanese management practices. How are their goals translated into manufacturing functions?"

Ken suggested "Look at what is on the walls and visible as to how people are measur- ing themselves. We tend to take simple things and complicate them. The Japanese take complex ideas and make them simple."

A little levity was added by Bob Beck, "No matter how much I read, I still have a hard time believing that grass mats cure hangovers." After the laughter died down, Mantos of the quick wit said "You're not supposed to eat them Bob."

Bob then went on to relate his expectations "We are fixing to introduce a product which is going to break all of our current processes. I would like or hope to see examples of this as well as new products which go into existing processes."

Ed Bourdeau stated "I am looking to see examples of what the effects are on the human factors when demand is higher or lower than predicted. I would also like to see how marketing and manufacturing relate to each other."

FORMING 36

"It will take everybody in the group concentrating full attention to catch all the subtle- ties," Ken pointed out. "That is why the bus trips are so critical so that we can understand all we can from the data. The process of translation also gives us a lot of time for reflection."

"I'm quite interested in the management processes and reward structures," asserted Ed Bishop. "I want to know how the Japanese are so adept at strategic planning and then can execute that plan. Our culture doesn't seem to be so good at either."

I

Warming the cockles of my heart Mike Dolan asked "What are the strategies around software? the office environment? the paperwork systems? It appears they have cleaned up the shop floor but it's not so clear that they have cleaned up anything else. How can we leverage computer technology? Organizational structures often reflect the way that you design products and I am interested in seeing the Japanese product designs. I think Digital has an ability to manage complex processes, yet I was surprised that this was expressed as a strength of the Japanese. I do see a passion within our own company particularly in the West Coast engineering folks. I can see how to visual- ize ten Inventory turns, but not how we make it happen. Do we need to take the risk of a quantum leap versus the philosophy of small Incremental steps? Is manufacturing a competitive weapon or is it just a service? I would like to understand the Japanese Companies Goals versus their strategies. Is quality a goal or a strategy? You can't have four goals. Manufacturing in Digital is a second class citizen."

I can't resist an editorial comment here as Mike's comment on manufacturing as a second class citizen drew assent from everyone in the crowd. In my eleven years at Digital I have yet to meet the organization that is the first class citizen. I have had the privilege of participating in managerial committees and task forces across all of DEC's functions and I have yet to meet the organization that thinks they are the top of the pyramid. However I have yet to figure out whether this is a good statement about our company or a bad one, indicating that the whole company is in victim mode.

Ken took a moment to offer some additional insights into a shift in Japanese strategies "Do you realize that there are 750 wholly owned Japanese companies in the United States? Why would Japan invest in the US? Well, there are lower tax rates; and there Is a $2000 per worker less cost per year in the US. The Nissan plant in Tennesee has better productivity than its Tokyo mother plant."

Jerry Linsky illustrated his expectations by relating a customer visit he was involved in several years ago "I was part of a group that had to calm a Japanese customer who was upset at our poor quality. I came in expecting to teach them about statistics. The customer spent two hours telling us what our quality was. We couldn't believe it and yet he was spot on. Their ability to manufacture for other markets is so unbelievable. They don't even have grass over there, yet they make Toro lawnmowers which start on the first pull. I would like us to gather as much data as possible to ensure our s u ~ v a l . I don't want to end up in the a setvice industry."

My hackles rankled with that one. Everytime service or sewice industry was mentioned it was clear that the association was with a janitorial service or a MacDonaldJs type of service. I wish we could come up with another word which distinguishes the type of value added services that characterizes our businesses in Software Services, Computer Special Systems, and Educational services. When futurists talk about moving to a service based economy it it the value added one not the janitorial one, but it is the janitorial one that receives all the publicity. OK, get off your soap box, Skip.

FORMING 37

We had a terrific cross section of folks and Mike Hasty is the prototypical Down East Maine type who is a terrific engineer. Mike hit the engineering theme "I want to steal everything that isn't nailed down! How do you really do simplification? We make clus- ters to process the complexity."

Paul interjected "Don't go too far. We get paid nice salaries to manage that complex- Ity."

Mike continued "I want to get my nose rubbed& JITTTQC. My concern is that there is an implicit headset that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. In DEC, we encourage the wing nuts and innovators. I don't see how the two are companitple and I don't want to lose the ability to be a wing nut."

"When I first started going over to Japan," reminisced Ken, "I wanted to see JIT, but all we got were talks on TQC. On the second set of trips half the companies changed their presentations to JIT just to please us, to make sure that we got what we came for. This was such a clear illustration of their attitude that the customer is always right."

"What's the context of things?" started Steve Shepherd. "How do things fit into a bigger picture. Up until now I have been skeptical of JlTmQC because I don't see the next step. I have several random questions: Is valulng dlfferences so lngralned in me that there is more than one right? Is JITTTQC right for our industry? Is it transportable to our industry and culture? This stuff works in a 2000 year old culture but will it work In a 300 year old culture. On our way out here, Lois and I visited two companies that are employing JITTTQC. I got my answers to both. Yes, both can be done and the companies were not associated with the Japanese. It's a sobering amount of work to get done. In Albuquerque one part of a line is doing it but the norms and values haven't changed. With the JlT/TQC context there are no inventions required. At the other end of the invention spectrum is the Artificial Intelligence tools going into manufacturing, JITTTQC is one of the best reactive problem solving methods invented. It as- sumes you have something to start with."

As I am listening to the introductions I am also reflecting on the presentation that we will be giving the Japanese. It is scary to me to see references to Computer Integrated Enterprise as an end goal. It puts the focus in entirely the wrong place. I certainly don't want to work for a company who states their goals in terms of the computer rather than the people. I also wonder if anyone has applied the JlTfrQC concepts to education? Can this trlp be considered education Just In Time for the CSM metastructure?

"I want to separate out myth from reality," opens Ed Turcotte. "I want to find the com- monality and the differences. I am not looking for a particular how to. I really want to look at simplicity - live. How do they get an order through the system: I would like to see a company that has done the changes in years, rather than decades. I think this group is emotionally committed. I hope to see the dynamics grow such that the emo- tional commitment can be passed to the rest of the organization and go well beyond the next sixteen days."

It was now my turn and hard to add much after all of the excellent comments from this crew. "First of all I am very pleased to be on this trip, even though I feel like an outsider at the moment. I am hoping that half of my education will come from the Japanese and half will come from this group as I get the privilege of seeing the plants through 22 pairs of eyes and differing expertise. I have been In the value added services business all my llfe and contrary to Jerry's concerns I am qulte happy being In the service business. Over half of our business in Software Services is CIM related, and yet we have

FORMING 38

no idea how the Japanese are going about achieving their miracle. My primary concern is that we will lose not only the computer hardware business to the Japanese but also the computer software business."

Susan Williams offered a brief but right on summary "I am looking forward to the adventure. It's not about automation; it's about the mind, the head. I hope to be a gath- erer of information. Most of my concerns will be over the minute the flight ends - I hate flying. " f

"Adventure, that is a good word," added Jon Wettstein. "This study mission is a great chance to step back from the pace we are on in Burlington. Reflection. Before we take the next jump, what is it that we are trying to accomplish? My concerns are all around the area of change. We have a responsibility for bringing it back, but how will I deal with unexpected learnings? I want to see the whole."

Ken McGuire then summarized "We owe you an accurate understanding. Most of the Japanese writing is either apologetic or embellished. We need to understand the context. My first Impressions were: there was nothing there I did not already now - it was the recomblnation that occurred that was the innovation. That was a crltical observation for me. Continuous Improvement is a key theme. Every time I go to Japan it is better. I keep shaking my head at their improvements. Working capital employed is a key metric, yet first we have to get quality. How do you manage the communications chain as all the materials tend towards commodity. Why are we looking at companies that are not exactly like your business? We hope you can abstract from businesses we don't know a lot about. We will be able to SEE a lot more. I hope this is not your last trip. I hope that you continue to go to Japan to learn. We are not trying to be multifunctionals but rather multispecialists. We wan't to be good at several things, not mediocre at a couple of things. "

Per then gave us a slide show of Tokyo to give us a feeling of what our first day would be like. His description of the "screaming chicken" restaurant was a hit; we couldn't wait to EXPERIENCE that on Sunday. Per also noted that we would have two interpreters on the trip. One of the interpreters would be responsible for the business and technical translations; and one would perform the logistics and administrative translations.

The expectations for what this group will do after the trip was the final agenda item for the evening. Paul asked the following of us:

1. Be empowered - share our enthusiasm 2. Do five presentations upon our return 3. Keep the spark alive by:

Showing up at monthly seminars Six month followup reunion in Burlington Show what we have done, not talk about what we will do

4. Be a cross functional group that can serve as a help group for mutual problem solving and support.

2 DAY 2: ESTABLISHING STUDY GROUPS

Paul opened this morning's session with a question to the plants. "Are we prepared to handle reciprocal visits? If we could offer a visit back to one of our plants, it is very well received by our Japanese hosts."

FORMING 39

We start the group education process this morning by sorting out the small group process for the trip. First we have to agree on the number and topics for the small groups. The starting point are the topics that were in the pre-trip material. The flve groups that were agreed on and their chairpersons are:

Marketing - Jerry Linksy Operations - Mike Dolan Vendor Relationships - Steve Shepherd Human Relations - Steve Townsend " Finance (Investment Strategy) - Bob Beck

The rest of us then volunteer for the group that we are most interested in and we achieve a balance between the groups.

We then ask if it Is OK to sign up for more than one group for those that have interests in multiple areas. To help insure cross-pollination multiple group signup is encouraged.

Ken explains to us the role of the small group is to prepare one question for the formal question and answer period at the end of each plant tour. Then each of the groups is responsible for preparing a daily and weekly summary of the observations.

We then move into a summary of the final list of companies that have agreed to host us. Ken has a list of companies that he has done visits on previous missions. Ken and Ed tried to match our vendors and customers so that there is a strong relationship with either DEC or MEAC or both. There were some companies who would not have us because they are competitors (like Fujitsu) or a company felt that they could not do the visit right in terms of the setting. Because the Japanese language is so difficult to write, the visuals that will be presented to us will be very simple and often in English for preciseness.

The following are brief thumbnail sketches of the companies that we will visit:

CANON

The Toride Plant makes copiers and office automation equipment. They have had a hard time lately since so much of there business Is export and the Yen has risen so much against the dollar. This plant introduces twenty new products per year. The key factor we will see is the usage of people.

Not much is known by Ken as this will be the first time he will be visiting these two plants.

TOSHIBA

They are both a supplier and a customer of Digital's. We will find that Japanese companies tend to talk about their success in terms of their product introductions rather than their financials.

TOKYO JUKl

This company is a Deming Quality Prize award winner. We should look for their inspection and test philosophy. Foolproofing and failsafing are key components of their methods. This Is the company where we will be most likely to see Quality Control.

FORMING 40

These compan relations visits host.

ies can host at most five of these visits a year. These are not public but require considerable expense and involvement on the part of the

MATSUSHITA, HlTACHl

What we will see at these two companies are among the most regimented of employee cultures. The employees of these companies are nearly unhirable by other companies. At Hitachi, a non-regular employee has to wajt two years to become a regular employee. To graduate the employee has to give a four hour presentation on all the companies products - in English.

HONDA

Honda is aiming to be the number three auto producer in the world. You can see this plant operating on a drumbeat, almost pulsating in gigantic proportions on 15 second cycles.

We will visit the export plant. The master schedule is level as far in the future as possible. By mixing export and domestic, it is much easier to survive than all one or the other. We will see the largest auto automtated storage and retrieval system. The system Is used for scheduling for exact truck loading once the ship hits the New York docks. The ASR serves as a sorting operation.

One of the reasons the Japaneses automobile manufacturers are looking to move their operations to the US is their total passion for quality. By coming to the US they can increase their quality by 10% which is the percentage of cars that the New York steve- dores ding up coming off the boats.

Ken finished the presentation with another saying that has stayed with me and I have applied to many situations since returning:

"If you visit Japan for three weeks, you can write a book. If you are there for three months, it is difficult to write a short article. If you stay in Japan for three years, it is hard to make a single comment without paragraphs of qualification. After a while It Is difficult to understand the land of contradictions."

It is now time to head for the airport and the long trip west. Arrangements are impeccable. The trip was long. I survived.

We arrived into Narita airport in a windstorm and the plane is all over the place coming in for a landing. It is quite hot and steamy the minute we get off the plane. In short order we are off the plane and onto the bus.

I feel like my head is on a swivel the entire drive in even though I am really beat. My surprise is how much open land there is between the airport and downtown Tokyo, even though the land is all being cultivated as small rice paddies. After a slow tortuous path along the crowded expressways we reach the Akasaka Prince Hotel. Ken has fore- warned us that we will be able to see the hotel for at least a half hour before we can navigate the traffic jams and get there.

This is going to be a short evening for me. We get checked in. The room is great and I go horizontal real quick.

3 DAY 3: EXPLORING TOKYO

The only problem I have with going to bed right after arriving is that at three o'clock in

FORMING 41

the morning I am wide awake staring at the ceiling. Well there is nothing better to do than to get up and read. I read for several hours in Hall's The Silent Language. One passage puts on a good filter for the two way observation that will be going on during the trip:

"Groups can be defined by the relation of their members to a certain pattern. . . A pattern is a meaningful arrangement of sets shared by a group. . .At the beginning of the century Japanese businessmen were coming to this country in Increasing numbers. Llke all travelers, they had difficulty orienting themselves. One of them Is said to have written a book for other Japanese businessmen who might travel to America. In Inter- preting the passage that follows, it should be remembered that relative status is the key to much of Japanese life. This heirarchical system is formal, yet a great many of the rules are technical. It comes as no surprise, then, to find that our Japanese author opens his book by telling his readers that American life is full of ceremony but that the ceremony is so complex that no foreigner can ever hope to master it. Courageously, however, the writer offers a guide to conduct by instancing examples of behavior which might be followed. When two American businessmen meet, he points out, there is a lot of noise, they beat each other on the back, then as though by signal they both reach for cigars which they offer to each other. Both men will refuse the other's cigar, but ultimately the man of inferior status will accept the cigar of the man of superior status."

"Despite this ludicrous analysis, most of us recognize the pattern. It is an informal one which is dying out. But we also know that part of the pattern is that the senior will accept the cigar of the junior If the junior is on the way up -- a cue to him that the 'old man' recognizes this. The hierarchical emphasis which the Japanese observer gave this pattern suggests another aspect of our way of life which is ostensibly chrarcterized by an underlying formal pattern of equality." (The Silent Language p. 125)

For a change of pace, I move to Bateson:

"Of course, the whole of the mind could not be reported in a part of the mind, This follows logically from the relationship between part and whole. The television screen does not give you total coverage or report of the events which occur in the whole television process; and this not merely because the viewers would not be interested in such a report, but because to report on any extra part of the total process would require extra circuitry. But to report on the events in this extra circuitry would require a still further addition of more circuitry and so on. Each additional step toward increased consciousness will take the system farther from total consciousness. To add a report on events in a given part of the machine will actually decrease the percentage of total events reported. (Steps to an Ecology of Mind) p. 432

This last passage really hits home. How am I going to be able to see the whole that is presented in the next several weeks without getting bogged down in terminal analysis and sheer data overload. Particularly, if as Hall warns, it is difficult to distinguish the unimportant patterns from the important ones.

Fortunately I am saved by sunlight. Even though it is about 5AM there is enough light to go jogging by. As I put on my jogging clothese I notice a brochure on jogging trails in the immediate vicinity. What a nice touch. I decide to traverse the Lesser imperial Palace so that I can take a look at the baseball stadium that is beyond It.

One real surprise on the tour is beer vending machines right out on the street. The machine is so well stocked it even has bottles of sake. Clearly I am in a different culture. When I can do it, getting up and running in a deserted city at the break of day ls

FORMING 42

my favorite way to explore. The world is mine alone, yet all of the best and the worst of man's mind surrounds me.

The morning crawls by but soon it is time to meet and pool our gifts. Quite an impressive array and it is pretty clear that we have gone a little overboard. But as Paul points out, "with all these gifts the next set of tour missions are going to be treated royally."

Our first formal meeting Is to host Jean Pearce, a columnist for the English language Japan Times. She is a diminutive lady who has' been in Japan for several decades. As she gets started, she is talking so fast and so colorfully that I have great difficulty tak- Ing notes. She was just delightful and. so helpful in getting us to look at Japan through a different set of eyes.

Jean started by pointing out the difference between East and West through something as simple as eating utensils. Silverware is noisy, clunky and cutting. The chopsticks are quiet and have not been used by others before. They are natural and have a sensitivity.

Knowing her audience she grabbed our attention right away with a dlscussion of how quality control pervades all of the Japanese culture. Nig htengale droppings have been used for centuries as a cosmetic for women's complexions. It used to be that you would go to a local birds store and collect nightengale droppings for 10 yen. But with the advent of quality, now you have to go lo a drugstore and get the droppings for 1000 yen. But she reminded us, now the droppings are clean and safe.

She showed us an example of origami, the art of paper folding, by folding a dollar bill - the shrinking dollar. Then she pulled out a little cage for keeping bugs in the house so that one can hear the song of summer. The cage is arranged so that you feed the bug cucumbers or watermellon. I asked her later about these cages and she pointed me to the following short story:

Kusa-Hibari

"His cage is exactly two Japanese inches high and one inch and a half wide: its tiny wooden door, turning upon a pivot, will scarcely admit the tip of my little finger. But he has plenty of room in that cage -- room to walk, and jump, and fly, for he is so small that you must look very carefully through the brown-gauze sides of It In order to catch a glimpse of him. I have always to turn the cage round and round, several times, in a good light, before I can discover his whereabouts, and then I usually find him resting in one of the upper corners - clinging, upside down, to his ceiling of gauze.

"Imagine a cricket about the size of an ordinary mosquito - with a pair of antennae much longer than his own body, and so fine that you can distinguish them only against the light. Kusa-Hibari, or 'Grass-Lark' is the Japanese name of him; and he is worth in the market exactly twelve cents: that is to say, very much more than his weight in gold. Twelve cents for such a gnat-like thing! . . . By day he sleeps or meditates, except while occupied with the slice of fresh egg-plant or cucumber which must be poked into his cage every morning. . .to keep him clean and well fed is somewhat troublesome: could you see him, you would think It absurd to take any pains for the sake of a creature so ridiculouly small.

"But always at sunset the infinitesimal soul of him awakens: then the room begins to fill with a delicate and ghostly music of indescribable sweetness - a thin, silvery rippling and trilling as of tiniest electric bells. As the darkness deepens, the sound becomes

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sweeeter - sometimes swelling till the whole house seems to vibrate withe the elfish resonance - sometimes thinning down into the faintest imaginable thread of a voice. But loud or low, it keeps a penetrating quality that is weird . . .All night the atomy thus sings: he ceases only when the temple bell proclaims the hour of dawn.

"Now this tiny song is a song of love -- vague love of the unseen and unknown. It is quite impossible that he should ever have seen or known, in this present existence of his. Not even his ancestors, for many generatihs back, could have known anything of the night-life of the fields, or the amorous value of song.

"They were born of eggs hatched in a jar of clay, in the shop of some insect-merchant: and they dwelt thereafter only in cages. But he sings the song of his race as it was sung a myriad years ago, and as faultlessly as if he understood the exact significance of every note. Of course he did not learn the song. It is a song of organic memory - deep, dim memory of other quntillions of lives, when the ghost of him shrilled at night from the dewy grasses of the hills. Then that song brought him love - and death, He has forgotten all about death: but he remembers the love. And therefore he sings now - for the bride that will never come.

"So that his longing is unconsciously retrospective: he cries to the dust of the past - he calls to the silence and the gods for the return of time. . .Human lovers do very much the same thing without knowing it. They call their illusion an Ideal: and their Ideal is, after all, a mere shadowing of race-experience, a pahntom of organic memory. The living present has very little to do with It. . .Perhaps this atom also has an ideal, or at least the rudiment of an ideal; but, in any event, the tiny desire must utter its plaint in vain.

"The fault is not altogether mine. I had been warned that if the creature were mated, he would cease to sing and would speedily die. But, night after night, the plaintive, sweet, unanswered trilling touched me like a reproach -- became at last an obsession, an affliction, a torment of conscience; and I tried to buy a female. It was tool late In the season; there were no more kusa-hibari for sale, -- either males or females. The insect-merchant laughed and said, 'He ought to have died about the twentieth day of the ninth month.' (It was aleady the second day of the tenth month.) But the insect- merchant did not know that I have a good stove in my study, and keep the temperature at above 75 degrees F. Wherefore my grass-lark still sings at the close of the eleventh month, and I hope to keep him alive until the Period of the Greatest Cold. However, the rest of his generation are probably dead: neither for love nor money could I now find him a mate. And were I to set him free in order that he might make the search for himself, he could not possibly live through a single night, even if fortunate enough to escape by day the multitude of his natural enemies in the garden - ants, centipedes, and ghastly earth-spiders.

'Last evening - the twenty-ninth of the eleventh month - an odd feeling came to me as I sat at my desk: a sense of emptiness In the room. Then I became aware that my grass-lark was silent, contrary to his wont. I went to the silent cage, and found him lying dead beside a dried-up lump of egg-plant as gray and hard as a stone. Evidently he had not been fed for three or four days; but only the night before his death he had been singing wonderfully -- so that I foolishly imagnined him to be more than usually contented. My student, Aki, who loves insects, used to feed him; but Aki had gone into the country for a week's holiday, and the duty of caring for the grass-lark had developed upon Hana, the housemaid. She is not sympathetic, Hana the housemaid. She says that she did not foget the mite -- but there was no more egg-plant. And she had

FORMING 44

never thought of substituting a slice of onion or of cucumber!. . .I spoke words of repr- oof to Hana the housemaid, and she dutifully expressed contrition. But the fairy-music had stopped: and the stillness reproaches; and the room is cold, in spite of the stove.

"Absurd!. . . I have made a good girl unhappy because of an insect half the size of a barley-grain! The quenching of that infinitesimal life troubled me more than I could have believed possible. . .Of course, the mere habit o f thinking abhout a creature's wants - even the wants of a cricket - may create, by insensible degrees, an imaginative interest, an attachment of which one becomes conscious only when the relatlon is broken. Besides, I had felt so much, in the hush of the night, the charm of the delicate voice - telling of one minute existence dependent upon my will and selfish pleasure, as upon the favour of a god - telling me also that the atom of ghost in the tiny cage, and the atom of ghost within myself, were forever but one and the same in the deeps of the Vast of being. . .And then to think of the little creature hungering and thirsting, night after night and day after day, while the thoughts of his guardian deity were turned to the weaving of dreams!. . .How bravely, nevertheless, he sang on to the very end - an atrocious end, for he had eaten his own legs!. . .May the gods forgive us all - especially Hana the housemaid!

"Yet, after all, to devour one's own legs for hunger is not the worst that can happen to a being cursed with the gift of song. There are human crickets who must eat their own hearts in order to sing." Use Both Sides of Your Brain p. 73.

Jean continued pointing out the differences in the two cultures by holding up a small dish that had been broken. She told us that both cultures certainly know how to mend breaks in a dish, but in the West we try and make sure that the break doesn't show after the repair. In Japan, they highlight the break by covering over the repair with liquid gold to signify the value.

Drinking is an art form as well and Jean illustrated how to hold a cup of beer and sake. She told us that it is very impolite to pour your own drink and that a key duty of attend- ing dinner is to pour for your companions. We all readily adapted to this trait during the trip.

My lasting impression of the grace which the Japanese possess was displayed for us so beautifully by Jean. She showed how even the seeming simplist of movements is viewed as an art form - the presentation of business cards (meishi). We almost throw our cards at other people. The Japanese cup their hands together with the card in the middle and PRESENT their card to the other person. I watched this for the entire two weeks and was so touched by this attention to detail and simple graceful method of showing respect.

We all had a good laugh at illustrations of consumer goods that the Japanese try to copy from the West but get just slightly wrong. The name of a new sports drink was Pocari SWEAT. The name of a coffee creamer came out CREAP.

Throughout the talk Jean was trying to get us to see what we might otherwise overlook. A beautiful illustration of this was the haori coat that she brought with her. Distinguished old devil Mike Dolan was kind enough to model the coat for the rest of us. We all noted how kind of dreary the coat was in its solid black. Then she had Mike open up. the inside of the coat - the most beautiful silk colors and designs were on the inside of this drab old coat. "This is so characteristic of the Japanese people," mused Jean. "What is important, is not seen."

FORMING 45

Jean really warned us not to be confused by the Japanese politeness and warmth and nodding while they are listening. They are not necessarily agreeing with what you are saying, but more in how you are saying it.

Our theme for the trip came out in this first session as Jean talked to us about the Importance of Wa or harmony. Wa is more important than anything. She illustrated this by the trauma she found that she was causing at her local bank. Whenever she pulled into the parking lot, she put her car straight into the parking spot. She watched the attendent go crazy each time she came in. when she came out, she would always find her car turned around and backed in. It finally dawned on her to ask the attendent what the problem was. He replied that she was disturbing the Wa of the parking ga- rage.

Jean illustrated different aspects of consensus, "often you will find that strikes are held on lunch hours so that customers will not be inconvenienced. The Japanese can't understand General Motors paying dividends and then laying off thousands of workers. They feel that the US- has their priorities all wrong. When a company goes to recruit young girls in the country, the president goes to the parents and takes a responsibility for the girls."

Jean then related some sobering statistics. Only twenty percent of the land in Japan is level enough for cities. Fifty percent of the people live in the strip between Tokyo and Osaka.

When you are talking about Japan, there is much conflicting information and yet every opinion is valid. She gave a good illustration of the difference in the orderliness of our two cultures. Horn honking used to be a dreadful problem in Tokyo, so a law was passed eliminating the honking of horns, At midnite one evening, all horn honking was supposed to cease and sure enough it did. In the US, all of us would have been waiting for Midnight and would have honked our horn one last time - after midnight.

In the pursuit of Wa, it is Important for all members of Japanese society to be watchful of others rights and to apologize if a slight is even suspected. This is tough for us to deal with and Jean related "There was an alteraction between a couple of sailors who were beating up on a taxi driver. A third sailor was innocently walking by. When the police came they arrested all three sailors. The third sailor vehemently protested his innocence but he was still locked up with the rest. He was getting nowhere until the interpreter asked him whether he had said he was sorry. 'No why should I, I didn't do anything,' the sailor replied. But you have to. No I don't. The interpreter then went on: Well aren't you sorry for something, like the fact that you were walking by when the incident happened. 'You bet' replied the sailor. 'Well, tell them you are sorry for that1- said the interpretor. The sailor did and was released immediately."

Some random notes:

o The four fears of early Japan were: Flood, Fire, Father and Earthquake.

o Our conference room would be an apartment for four Japanese.

o Japanese wives saying "A good husband is healthy and absent."

o Work is an aesthetic pleasure for the Japanese. The first time Jean ever saw the Japanese really angry was due to a rail strike because people could not get to work.

o Pain. The dentist decides whether you get novocaine, as everyone should be expected to stand a little pain.

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o Looking in the eye. The only time the Japanese do this is on the battlefield. In the US, we don't trust folks who don't look us in the eye.

o Breaking wind is perceived as cultural. Jean passed around a book that was the Kama Sutra of breaking wind. Mike Hasty added chuckling "Gee, I didn't know I had so many cultured friends."

On this note, we took off for the bus for a whirlwind tour of Tokyo. We hit an oriental bazaar gift store, a flea market, and then get an unscheduled treat - Mitsui Omni Koshi.

Today is the festival that celebrates the finishing of the planting of the rice. So all over Tokyo neighborhoods that have existed since the Edo era are out carrying their portable shrines through the streets. Ken likened this type of festival to Japanese management. It looks disorderly but it moves. The priest on the horse is just titular. He sets the direction, but goes with the flow. These festivals are Indicative of Japan's focus on achieving one's fair share, as opposed to our focus on setting rules for fair play.

Lunch is at Chinzan so, a much celebrated center for Japanese weddings and recep- tions. There is a wedding every 15 minutes on a Sunday. The display of Japanese women and children in their kimonos is spectacular. While we are wandering through the ancient gardens the Kodak blimp drifts by overhead.

Our next stop is at the Asakusa Nakamise Temple, a buddhist shrine. Surrounding this whole area is many hundreds of small shops. We take in the sights and smells and watch the Japanese praying for luck and eagerly looking at their fortunes.

Our last sightseeing stop for the day is the Akihabara shopping area, This Is a hacker's heaven as there is all of the Japanese electronics as far as the eye can see. From finished goods like N s and Compact Discs to the actual components themselves, it is all right here. The noise of the hawkers trying to get you into the stores and the blaring music is downright deafening. I had to pop into an Apple store and see how it com- pared to the US. It felt just like Computerware in Palo Alto. An excellent selection of software for the Macintosh was available in both English and Japanese.

The optional stop for the day was for Jean to show us what a screaming chicken restaurant was like. Twenty large boisterous Americans go streaming into a Yakitori Restaurant. Trying to cram all of us into the narrow space of two wooden tables was a sight to behold. In my journal I recorded:

I woke up this morning with the Forming, Storming, Nonning and Performing nmning through my head. Create the shared experience before we get going in the .real 'study'. This whole session of sightseeing and then 'screaming chicken' dinner repeats the example of Outward Bound. Maybe there is an overarching pattern to 'experiential learning.' I suspect much of what Jean Pearce and the books did for us is to establish the filters in a non-business context before hitting Ihe business context. Pop us out of our usual ways of viewing the world. . . The me hasn't started being affected yet. I can't seem to stay in one place long enough to sponge and absorb and somehow look inside of myself. I'm still in the semi-exhausted state and Tokyo is 'just' another big city. It is very easy to get around here. The shared experiences of the last few days are providing an awfully rich start. It is so easy when we don't have the purpose pounded into us, but rather we p,mvide the direction and context.

Some random notes from this first day in Tokyo:

o Steve Shepherd got himself a phrase book and cracked us up with his selections:

FORMING 47

What star were you born under? Been in Japan long?

o Ken McGuire: "When you start bowing while on the phone, you know you have been In Japan too long."

4 DAY 4: LEARNING THE ROPES OF A PLANT TOUR

After several days of informality, twenty "suits" showed up for this mornings opening of the real study mission. Boy we are looking and acting right professional this morning.

This morning Mr. Nagamine, Digital's Manager of the Japan and Far East vendor base, joined us to present an overview of Digital in Japan and the relations we have with vendors and customers.

The session started with a lot of bulletted data about our Japanese subsidiary and then finished with an interactive Question and Answer:

Digital In Japan:

Opened small office in 1968. Formed subsidiary in 1982. DEC employees number 2172 at FY87 end

- 600 are college recruits NOR: $330 Million

- Number 2 in GIA out of $1.2 Billion FY91 target is to be greater than $1 Billion

Mr. Nagamine returned to Japan from the U.S. in 1980 to spend two years educating the vendor base as to who we are. He noted that the Japanese cannot pronounce Equipment so DEC Is often confused with TEC (Tokyo Electric Company).

As so many of the DEC employees are college recruits, they are still in the training process. We are spending money on these folks but not making any money on them yet. This is part of DEC joining the processes of the entire Japanese employment system,

DEC spends $200 million in Japan on vendors in Japan. Exchange rate is too high and we are spending too much.

"Ken Olsen was over here telling me I have to cut these expenses 40%. 1 say goodbye - that's job, " laughed Nagamine-san.

The major products we get from Japan are: LA50 LN03 Video Monitors

Largest vendor4s Hltachi. We spend $55 Million with them. Monitors, disk drive motors, gate arrays

Ricoh Is 62 supplier at $45 million. LN03, LN04

Mitsubishi supplies $30 million of dynamic RAMS NEC supplies $30 million of semiconductors

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TEC supplies 1450, LA75, LA85 Fujitsu supplies $20 million of semicondutors and Printed Circuit Boards. Matsushita supplies $3 Million and is our largest customer at $10 million, Kyocera supplies packaging materials at $6 million.

It's interesting the balance of trade difficulties with these companies. We buy far more from them than they spend on our equipment and it is getting much worse as the Yen1 Dollar fluctuatlon grows worse from our standpoint. We have the balance the wrong way.

Of the companies that we will be seeing in these two weeks, those that are suppliers and customers are:

Ricoh Toshiba Matsushita Brother Hitachi .

Those hosts which are customers only are:

Honda Canon Nissan

Mr. Nagamine noted that many of the customers were quite nervous about us coming to visit them, particularly their engineers.

"I am a member of your utilize my skills during the

We all cracked up.

Jon Wettstein started the tems to our customers?"

study team," concluded Mr. Nagamine, "please feel free to mission. I can speak a little Japanese."

questioning with "What is your view of the quality of our sys-

"We have an aging center (pool) here," replied Mr. Nagamine. "Japanese understand 99% quality. However, they don't expect to get the 1%. In the past our quality was terrible. We had Coca Cola bottles showing up Inside the cabinets."

"Given the balance of trade, what is the attitude twoard US business people?" asked Steve Townsend.

"We have to work on the semiconductor problem together. DRAMS have gone up 5O0/0, but Japan is the only source now," answered Nagamine-san.

Later on the bus, Steve noted "That was a good answer but it wasn't my question." Here's where we get our first glimpse of cultural differences. In the States we would just reask the question until it got answered or it would be clear that the person wouldn't answer. Here we are just that little bit unsure whether to press or not. Is it an understanding problem or a circumspection problem?

Beck: "Is our growth here due to market share gain or just the expansion of the local economy?"

Nagamine: "DEC is currently the number 10 or 11 computer systems supplier in Japan. We should be Number 5 in P(91."

FORMING 49

Greenberg: "What kind of training is given to the college recruits?"

Nagamine: "The college students join the company on April 1. They are then given a set of basic readings. We then send them to company education and then they are divided into groups by functions for on the job training."

Mantos: "If DEC has great success, will suppliers alter their policies towards us?"

Nagamine: "No. For the last ten years we have acquired Japanese components because of their low cost. But this won't work long term. Now I am trylng to work the mind sets of our suppliers to acquire the technologies and get our philosophies into the requirements so that our needs are designed in. It Is too late when we work just form specifications. As a buyer we have to better understand the suppliers capabilities. Right now the pressures are on us to close the procurement base due to YenIDollar exhcange rate. Resistor acquisition has shifted to Southeast Asia countries. Now the resistor acquisition is coming back here. Why? There are high precision requirements for surface mount technologies."

Time to head 'em on out.

Off we go to the bus.

4.1 AWARENESS - CANNON TORIDE FACTORY

Evening bridge, a thousand hands cool on the rail.

Ki ka ku

After we were on the bus and out of the center of Tokyo, Ken McGuire grabbed the microphone to give us the day's objective. "The Toride factory is quite large and is a good starting point for the trlp. Most of the general princlples that you have read about will be in evidence here. The objective today is to learn the ropes. We want to get a feel for what a plant visit is about and what the protocol is. Don't worry if you don't pick up on everything, because there will be plenty of opportunity in the next two weeks, "

The briefing materials for this visit were pretty extensive as our document had a copy of handouts from previous visits. To give a flavor of the material:

SELF REFLECTION

"Canon has evolved into a top-notch 'people' company. What was most Impressive about the company was the complete consistency between the corporate vision, goals, section objectives, group targets and individual purpose put into action. We observed an extremely unified, well thought-out and carefully implemented production process.

"In the seventies, Canon went through a period of self-reflection. It set a new goal for itself - to become a 'premier' company, one that has no debt, a recurring profit of 15% and a market share of 30% or more while experiencing an ongoing increase In sales. Through self-reflection, the company determined that it was very good in the area of 'hardware', ie, technology, but that considerable improvement was needed in the people aspect of the business.

FORMING 50

"Since then, Canon has succeeded in transforming itself into a great 'people' organization and has achieved its goal of becoming a 'premier' company.

"Canon has all the systems that American managers read so much about and the company appears to practice them with maximum efficiency and effectiveness. It has an excellent Small Group Improvement Activities (SGIA) prgram (they call it the ZD program), an outstanding Suggestion System, a strong bonus program (twice a year, 6.4 months of pay total), superb visualization (there,.are beautiful charts and graphs all over the plant), and a tailor-made version of Just-ln-Time production (they call it H.I.T. - based on Japanese initials that basically mean 'produce the necessary product when needed'). Also, Canon exemplifies the. best of Japanese manufacturing practices in that it has succeeded in taking the responsibility for quality out of the hands of QC special- lsts and placing it into the hands of foremen and workers."

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare.

4.2 INTEREST

After Ken's opening talk on Canon, we break into our small groups to figure out what questions we want to ask today. I am in the human resources group and we each take a few moments for reflection on what questions we each want the answers to thls week.

My questions all revolve around handling cultural changes in a large manufacturing company:

- What means individual performance in the Japanese system?

- What is the awareness level of the factory worker to external economic threats?

- How are massive cultural changes handled in relatively short periods of time? For example, Canon is supposed to have changed dramatically in six years. How?

- What is the span of flexibility within the organization? Is it just at the line, the engineering organization, the whole company?

At this point Ken interjects the overall process that we should follow for formal question:

1. Develop themes for questions. 2. Develop the question. 3. See If the question can be translated. 4. Loop if necessary.

I work cell, the

formulating the

Steve Townsend gathers us together and we agree on the major areas of focus:

Educational Development Process Stuctures and Roles Measurements and Rewards Change Process

I volunteer to track' the change management process.

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As I look around the bus and remember back to our introductions, it is interesting to see that over half of the study mission members have joined small work groups that are outside their areas of expertise. There Is something driving us to broaden ourselves. Is It the nature of each of us as individuals or have we been affected by the readings and study of Japan's focus on breadth in the individual?

4.3 OUR HOME AWAY FROM HOME I

Since the bus is going to be so much of our home and work area for the next several weeks it deserves a good bit of attention. Since we were larger than the normal study group, we needed the 32 passenger bus. Ken felt this was somewhat unfortunate In that it Is not quite as intimate as the 20 passenger bus. However, for us the layout worked quite well.

Each bus has a driver and a stewardess. There are seven rows of seats two to a side with an aisle in the middle, The last seat is four across the back with no aisle. Several of us 'engineers' figured out that this backseat was therefore wider than the other seats and we quickly tried to become attached to these seats.

What made all the difference though was that the seats all swiveled so that you had a great deal of flexibility for setting up small working areas around the bus. You could swivel a set of seats 90 degrees and face the center aisle or you could swivel 180 degrees and face the group behind you. I am sure that somebody could figure out all the permutations but suffice that there was requisite variety to meet our diverse needs during the trip.

There were three microphone plugs at the fore, middle and aft of the bus so that each of us had ready access to a device that would allow us to be heard over the road noise. In the front and the rear of the bus were N sets which came in handy for watching sumo wrestling on the longer drives and waits.

The role of the stewardess was as a greeter (ohio gasayamus) whenever we entered or left the bus and as a server of refreshments. Steve Shepherd felt duty bound to "adopt" each of these young ladies and let them know how much we appreciated them joining us. We began to wonder a bit though when we never had the same bus twice in Tokyo.

INVESTIGATION

We arrived at the Toride factory right on time and were ushered in to a large conference room with tables arranged in a large square. After coffee was served, we were welcomed by Mr. Shiasa the Toride Plant Manager. Plant Managers in Japan have a different role than in the US, Typically the Plant Managers of the largest facilities sit on the company's Board of Directors. So there is an enormous amount of respect and responsibility that are paid to these plant managers.

Mr. Shiasa spoke to us in Japanese in a very cordial speech. He was statiioned in New York City between 1959 and 1962. Canon is 50% of DEC's size. The Toride plant produces 50% of all Canon's products. There are 2600 people at the plant about 40% of which are women. The plant produces about $2 billion of equipment primarily for export.

FORMING 52

While speaking to us the plant manager was seated. He was in a company uniform (a pale grey set of pants and uniform jacket) but with a white shirt and tie. The Canon Corporate Headquarters representatlve, Mr. Ono, was in a suit. There were clearly dlffi- culties wlth the translation as those who spoke Japanese were laughing quite frequently during his talk, but it sure got lost by the time it got to us.

The average age of plant personnel is 30. They have 300 major vendors and 1000 small vendors. A major role for the plant engineers I* is to educate the vendors in Quality Control and Production Control.

Mr. Shiasa then started discussing the problem of dumping and the tariffs. As Europe is following the US lead, Canon is now wondering if it might be better to build machines in the US and then ship to Europe.

At the conclusion, Paul stands up to give the presentation on behalf of our study mission. As Paul was standing, our interpreter, Yoshi, needed to stand as well. Interesting protocol. Paul's presentation was simply superb. He Is an accomplished and very professional speaker. Here we were in a quite foreign environment and he didn't let the translation protocol get in the way at all. It is truly a gift to be able to give a formal presentation and also be able to exude a special warmth and sincerity.

Since we had seen the talk and knew we would be seeing it at least eleven times during the next two weeks it was difficult to focus. It became even more difficult when we realized that right outside our window was the loading dock and that there was a steady stream of trucks arriving. Later Steve Shepherd pointed out that the trucks were all side loading, either a metal lift side or canvas. On the way out to the Toride Plant we all commented on the number of trucks sitting in rest areas. We wondered if the rest areas weren't the staging areas for JIT deliveries. Ed Bourdeau commented that he'd love to have things under control enough to have a variable in his scheduling algorithm that paid attention to whether traffic was good or bad.

After the opening talks, we headed for the plant. Due to the noise we were all given portable ear phones to hear the comments from the tour guide. I eventually gave up and turned mine off. Between the plant noise, the static on the line, and the lack of Information coming through the translation, it wasn't worth the ear trauma.

Some notes from this plant visit:

o Each line capabile of producing each model

o There were at least five lines operating in the plant

o Above each line there was a power box that had a plug outlet of each country type that travelled with the unit.

o Kitting was done in tubs and travelled with the unit

o Music announces the arrival of an AGV as opposed to beeps and sirens. When a line Is shut down, music starts playing as well. Talk about a more pleasant way of alerting people.

o Stop and fix it. The worker has control of the line with a stop pulley and a help pulley above their workstation. If there is a problem the attitude is STOP and FIX it NOW.

o Second sourcing is done in house by making parts in each of the key components - drums, toners, electronics.

o SGlA is done in evening meeting several times a month

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o Where is the bottleneck in a straight line process?

o This factory produces 30,000 copier units per month.

Each line had an electronic display that had three numbers In it: Unit goal for the line, actual units produced today, and total minutes of downtime for the line. Each workstation had a red light to indicate that the worker had stopped the line and a yellow light to indicate that the worker needed help. All of these lights are at eye level so that from anywhere in the plant you can see what is going on -- and what isn't.

It became real clear real quick that out in the plant tour was where to ask the questions. Most of our guides spoke excellent English that they wouldn't use in the formal sessions. Joan Coulson was the master at this process as she would find the oldest man present, attach herself to him, and then play real dumb. She walked away with the best set of information.from each of our tours.

The most impressive part of the tour was getting to see the color copiers in action. I wish I had one of those in my office. To be able to plop in any color print and have a pretty close duplicate come out In seconds is so fantastic. I want one.

NOTE: For future study missions I strongly recommend that those people interested in making notes during the plant tours take some form of dictation cassette recorder. Trying to write while you are standing and being hurried through a plant was nigh on to useless. Steve Townsend and Jerry Linsky obtained superb notes through his little cassette recorder.

On the tour we asked what kind of training was given to employees to be more effective in the small group improvement activities. A personnel handbook was given to us. [Who has this jewel now?]

Being the first plant tour, it was hard to know what was normal and what was not. But there was something very disturbing about this Toride plant. It was the pace of activity on several of the lines. The pace was far beyond what I would guess could be sustainable day after day. The strain on the faces was very telling and the lasting impression was of a hive of an ant colony that has just been disturbed. There were expediters running all over which I certainly didn't expect to see In a plant which had AGVs.

There is no obvious computerization in the plant except for a couple of Canon PCs at the head end of each line (none of which were turned on). There was a pilot robot line in the back corner of the plant which was being used for experimenting. It was a straight line process with very simple robots. It looked to me to be more for show than for serious effort.

We talked about the JIT trucks. They are side loading so that they can deliver parts to whoever needs them next rather than in the order the truck is loaded. The side panels lift up to let a fork lift or human reach right in to get the appropriate tub of parts. Here's an interesting business to get into in the US - making JIT trucks. All these trucks are radio controlled. I wonder if by tapping into the airwaves you couldn't get a real good idea of your competitors production rates.

There is a dark side to the Japanese production machine and the Toride plant provided a glimpse of it. A recently translated book Japan in the Passing Lane gives a very detailed account of a line worker in Toyota's version of the ant colony:

"As I walked to work this morning, I noticed that the sun rose a little later. The glow around the edges of the mountains was thinner than yesterday.

FORMING 54

"The work, though, was the same plus overtime for an hour. Now that I'm back In my room it's hard to believe that I've stood there working for nine hours. At times, my head was spinning. The work Is still very hard, and all day I found myself crowding the next guy's position. Once I fall behind the line pace, I'm unable to get back to my regular position. Though I double my efforts, using twice as much energy, I just can't recover the lost seconds. It's like I imagine hell to be.

"Once, when I saw Chaplin's Modem Times, I remember really laughing at his accelerated motions as he tried to keep up with the fine. But I won't laugh any more - I'm doing the same thing now. All day, the boxes arrive at a fixed speed and at regular intervals with mechanical precision. The line is a machine, and for eight hours the hu- mans worklng at it are required to operate with machinelike accuracy. The line de- mands speed - relentless, mechanical and unchanging.

"The term 'converyer belt' suggests automation, but actually the work is done by human hands. Only the parts are transferred by automatic power. The first worker, stand- Ing at the begining of the assembly line, feeds the conveyor with parts. The next person assembles the parts, and the man next to him adds still more parts. All this is done in accorance with the line speed. The people working on the line are nothing more than power consumed in the process of assembly. What is achieved at the end of the line is the result of our combined energy. There's no need to shout at or berate workers to make them work. Just start the conveyor and keep It going: that's enough. The conveyor belt forces the workers into submission. During our working hours, we can't even talk. Even if we wanted to chat, the noise is so awful we can't hear one another." p 25.

"The pay slips of workers at the conveyor lines -- where work quotas are assigned - are not available. But I have heard that their basic pay, including production allowance, would be about twice the basic wage, and that the production allowance would go up and down by a margin of 40 percent. In other words, if a worker's basic wage is $318, his pay wil fluctuate between $636 and $763. The quota and production allowance constantly spur workers to increase their output. If the teams put in too much overtime, the production allowance is reduced 'because they are inefficient.' If the teams should have a successive three-month increase in the production allowance, the number of workers is reduced 'because they have too many workers.' This is the essence of the Toyota method of production. Introduced around 1960, this is functionally a piecework payment system." p 202

"In a speech at a managemnt-union convention in early November 1979, President Toyota stressed that 'we cannot afford to lose in the competition of the 1 9 8 0 ~ ~ ' and concluded: 'The competitors closely following us will make inroads if we lose the spirit of the challenge.'

"The rationalization policy proposed that day was to make bold and resolute decisions on 'strategic investments,' such as new plant construction, but to refrain from 'lnvest- ments for the increase of production capacity.' This is no more than a fancy way to repeat the Toyota ideology: 'With ingenuity and good ideas, we can find a solution to increased orders even beyond our present full capacity, though we know how hard it Is.' In other words, Toyota will expand its assembly-line facilities, but any increase in production should be managed through the intensification of labor. Speeding up the conveyor belts does not cost money." p. 205

We come back into the conference room to get a more detailed presentation from Mr. Ono about the SGlA activities. He started his presentation in English with "1 only know four words of English - Yes, No, OK Thankyou. Last week I learned a new one - DUMPING." Methinks we haven't heard the last of this topic for the next few weeks.

FORMING 55

The work structure for the plant is:

Plant Manager Division Manager Department Manager Foreman

Employee

The name for their SGIA activities is the "N Plan"

Necessary Numerous Neighbors Nice workplace

Essentially a team is -formed out of neighbors on the line. SGIA is a way of getting grouping out of a sequential process. It's interesting to contrast this with the Enfield team approach, both for their low volume and hlgh volume lines. I wonder If the small groups stay together at Toride through model changes.

It is clear that this factory could produce just about any electrical appliance up to the size of a MicroVAX. The pedestal moves along with the multi-country power box up above. Who cares what is in the middle? Flexibllity is beginning to take on a whole new meaning.

Mr. Ono described the old and new style of work organization. In the old method there was a three step process of SEE - PLAN - DO centered around the companies goal. Management was responsible for the SEE and PLAN, the worker was left with the DO. In the New Style, the starting point is a plan which management presents to the group. The group then establishes its goals and is responsible for all three pieces of the cycle (PLAN-00-SEE) with RESULT spinning out of the cycle. There is a three to four month cycle for SGIA. [NOTE: This aspect was fascinating. In a sense what management is doing is trying to expand even the lowest level of the plant's time horizon (Jacques Stratified Systems Theory) by design and invoivernent.] The reward for the SGIA teams is to travel abroad to visit other plants.

In the plant there are 324 groups and 516 tasks have been accomplished in a year (1.6 tasks per group per year). The goal is to get two tasks per year per group. It is difficult to keep these groups going because the products are changed relatively frequently and thus the people are moved around frequently.

Yoshi was a lot more comfortable translating for Mr. Ono than for the Plant Manager, Clearly the hierarchical awareness is in play even for a company outsider of the same age.

Mr. Ono then broke for questions and indicated that he hoped that there would be a two way discussion, that they could ask questions of us. Four other gentlemen joined the table at the front of the room so that all of their experts were present.

Steve Townsend started off with "What training do employees receive to participate in SGIA? "

Each year new employees start in April Orientation and education to company

Includes SGIA

FORMING 56

Four hours of discussion on SGIA After orientation then OJT - learn from more senior workers

[NOTE: I couldn't help but catch the similarity of the answer to Nakamine-san's. Over the two weeks, this answer would come out almost verbatim. There were several other questions that generated uncommonly similar answers. The answers were just too close to be there by accident. Is this an indication,of the homogeneity of the culture that even in different businesses and industries there is still a common handbook that has the pat answers to be handed out to gaijin.]

Q: How often are materials delivered?

A: The frequency is by part. JIT or once per week. There is incoming inspection.

Q: Are deliveries made direct to the line?

A: At beginning of a new model run, each lot is inspected. As experience is gained. then inspection is dropped and material is delivered straight to the line.

Q: How much Inventory is on hand at any one time?

A: Eight days on average. Some parts are delivered four times per day.

Q: What type of training is provided to the vendors?

A: At the start of a relationship we provide three days of training that go into Quality Control, Finance, SGIA, and Production Control. We train about 20 people at a time at the vendors site. When problems show up, we go onsite to the vendor.

Q: Can SGIA make recommendation that affect the whole line (a large scale suggestion)?

A: Yes. The groups can recommend to upper management.

Q: When there is an SGIA reward, is it for the whole group or an individual?

A: There are two types of suggestions: individual and small group. There are separate reward programs for both.

Q: Is the SGIA used at the front end of a product introduction?

A: In principle, no. It is intended for the improvement of existing products.

Q: How long does it take to get a new product design to volume production?

A: 75% of the plant output is new product this year.

Q: Are foremen part of the SGIA?

A: No, they are excluded. However, they are supportive of the activities.

Q: How are workers performance measured and how often?

A: (This caused the HQ PR guy to jump up and answer). Performance is measured twice a year as part of the bonus program. In the fall there is a promotion examination for 184 different types of jobs.

Q: What is the way in which the plant gets information on how the product is perform- Ing in the customer's hands?

A: Through claim cards the customers send In.

FORMING 57

Q: How do you know that you have a quality product at each stage of the production process?

A: (Lost in the translation)

At this point we switched and the Canon folks asked us questions. Paul did an excellent job of passing the question to the most qualified member of the study team to answer.

I ,

Q: What's a VAX?

Q: Your presentation said that it takes you 18 months to get to market with a new product. At Canon it takes us three *years to get to market. Maybe we could come study your methods?

Q: What is your impression of tour? Why are you touring Japan?

A: We are converting from batch processesing to continuous flows. We are hoping to use computers to implement this, but we wanted to see how you have accomplished this transition.

Q: What is the dependency of supply on your vendors versus how many of the parts do you make?

A: In Phoenix, we have 3000 parts. 90% of the parts are from external suppliers and material represents 60% of the cost of the product.

Q: Is there Incorning inspection?

A: In Phoenix, 40% is direct to the line and 60% is sampling inspection.

Q: I would like to know more about your company. I do not know much about DEC, so how about making some PR.

Take It away Joanie.

4.5 INSIGHT ACQUISITION

As a part of our education process, the first part of the bus ride after a company visit was reserved for first impression comments. Paul Mantos would start the discussions off with what he felt were the themes that came out of a particular visit and then we would pass the microphone around for comments from each individual. We are in- debted to Ed Sullivan for his copious notetaking during these sessions.

High Pressure Situation excellent Visibility Management complete lack of computers (only 1 PC spotted on the floor) continual flow of trucks at receiving area - no backup very little material around the floor very clean all things In place lack of distinction in dress style, all in uniforms pace line everyone in the plant was working everything in the plant was focused on material movement very little activity for data input 50% of IL Is Interface with vendors level of small groups working at (ie 4 screws to 2) '? No IL work teams - DEC has IL work teams

FORMING 58

production rate did not look sustainable did not look like optimized layout no interaction of people materials logistics

- smart carts - no shortages or excesses

Vendors initially 600-700 miles away, now gll the key vendors are close to plant - did not see any IL quality issues

safety issues did not see any real time data entry no use of computer systems do small groups function voluntarily? 50% of people worked with the vendors (lesson for us) trouble shooter is like an in process repair person overview orientation and video looked effective no waste (maybe TQC in another form) no computers in sight visual management real time goal-status-time driven eyelevel visibility pace of line can be changed to meet needs wooden platform is for visibility of operator not grounding joy at routine tasks is different than worker satisfaction making copiers is not simple and they automate management not involved in small groups (liked empowerment of workers) no apparent factory data collection system uncomfortable about rewards (Big Brother) ant Colony ECO seen as problem solving in small groups product fits process (lowfmedium technical process) excellent at implementing their plan everything has its place - they done it did not see overhead function work, that is real heartbeat of plan Process was Improved so that was going so fast with old technology they reorganized worker end of the process no automation in plant at all (computers) straight line is not the way to go frantic work delivered on the line, they had a plan and executed it

well - looked like handling material a lot of times - cleanliness of floor - well developed product designs - material delivered to floor impressive - mechanization not robotics - young workforce - no handicapped - most of the meaningful decisions on line layout seem to be made by

management - did not see anybody checking work - not apparent that Canon understood CADICAM and CIE opportunity

Summary By Paul

- no interaction with data - no ton of inventory - no trash

FORMING 59

- no admin types - no defects - no use of CADiCIMICAM - minimal people interaction - no checking of own work - no older workers - no break areas or employee interaction areas - about $500 K per employee . - all the manual parts carriers pull systems - no buisness plan - liked concept of goal, plan, do and see - Four steps in 11 years: first 3 are excellent

4.6 INTEGRATION

I could not help but feel that this was a plant that was broken. Ken McGuire described a key difference since his last visit "Six months ago the plant was working at 30% of capaclty. Today that plant is working at 115°/~ of capacity. The AGVs have a very narrow range of flexibility. They are now the bottleneck In the plant and that is why you see all the scurrying around for parts supply."

All over the plant there were big red numerals with 150 on them. Each employee had a replica of this as a lapel pin. I was trying to imagine what kind of a program It could be. Ken answered "Since most of the Canon product is for export, they are one of the hardest hit by the fall in the Yen exchange rate, The 150 is a program that was put In place to see how they could reduce costs so that they could be profitable at 150 Yen to the dollar. You can Imagine how much trouble they are In with the current rate of 140 Yen to the dollar. That's why they are running the plant over capacity right now."

As this thought began to sink in on the bus ride back, I began to marvel even more at the Japanese educational system. Here was a program that was pure international economics brought right to the shop floor. I tried to imagine trying a similar program at just about any US plant. Just trying to explain what the heck an exchange rate is would be a challenge.

4.7 SYNTHESIS - WORK GROUP REPORTS

Each work group started its own behavior for the preparation of summary reports. Some of the groups would do the report right after a visit. Others of us preferred to sleep on the experience of the visit so that we could get a different sense of the information that hit us. That is, we wanted to let the right brain or unconscious process the information a little longer (sounds like a good excuse for procrastinating doesn't it?).

4.7.1 MARKETING AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION -

The questions the team had formulated around how they maintain customer satisfaction from the Marketing Specification to volume manufacturing really was not applicable due to the Four Walls Operational nature of the Canon people for the question and answer period. However, we learned:

A) "Claim cards" are used to gather data on failures and problems.

FORMING 60

B) New Product teams are in the plant until some point at which they turn over the product to volume manufacturing.

C) 75% of all products running in the line were "new" products. "Newn here probably means upgraded models except for the Laser Beam printers and the color printer.

4.7.2 OPERATIONS - t

1) Excellent visibility management - signs, eye-level layout; good sense of what was going on. Easily seen - schedule performance and downtime.

2) Material dellvery is good, but handled too many times once in the plant. No detrash on the floor.

3) half of the Indirect Labor (IL) force dedicated to vendor devlopment, education and management.

4) Saw a "flat-out" assembly llne - several pieces were over capacity such as material delivery.

5) Ahead of schedule can be as bad as behind schedule - predictability and problem detectlon. Being ahead of schedule is viewed as a problem to be solved.

4.7.3 VENDOR RELATIONSHIPS - Vendor base: 1000: 300 key vendors One-half the total IL is involved in managing total vendor base

- 2600 total people -> 1300 IL -> 650 vendor base support Educate vendors in QC and PC techniques Controls vendor's QC and PC operations Delivery frequency: 4 times per day to weekly Some parts are MAKE vs BUY because only way to achieve quality All key vendors are located near the plant Incoming Inspection is not in series with receiving New products

Material 100% inspected Ship to stock

Average raw material stock is 8 days "SWAT Teams" sent to vendor to resolve problems Many sizes of recyclable containers - plastic totes On site vendor training - 20 people for 3 days 7% of plant output is Interplant to other subsidiaries

4.7.4 HUMAN RESOURCES - I) Reward system based on both individual and group effort

2) Promotion based on exam and performance, but still tied in to seniority and tenure. There are 15 levels and 104 different jobs.

3) Reward and promotion occurred annually'based on above. Base salary plus a bonus which is given twice a year.

4) SGlA training: minimal four hours formal training. High reliance on OJT. Emphasized new employee training. The managers and supervisors have no responsibility to support the SGIAs.

FORMING 61

5) SGlA group meetings are after hours, twice per month. They are not an integral part of the job. The result is 1.6 accomplishments per group, 2600 people and 326 groups.

6) SGlA decision making level (impact areas) seemed small. SGlA focused on process improvement, not process development. However there were other "teams", ie, for NPSU. t

7) SGiA exludes managers and supervisors.

8) Clear partitioning between managerial roles (plant manager, division manager, department manager, and forement). Four levels of management.

9) Teams took It upon themselves to form, elect leader, set targets and register it with management.

10) Everyone is in the. same uniform. Focus on sameness.

11) Each group encouraged to do improvement "their" way, however always with company goals as objective.

4.7.5 FINANCE AND INVESTMENT STRATEGY - A) Canon Toride factory used for high volume. Separate facility used for product and process debug.

9) Toride factory represents 50% of canon sales (output = 240 Billion Yen).

C) One half of 2600 employees are "direct labor"

D) It is possible that Canon may open additional plants in the U S . to avoid tariffs on products.

E) They want to be a Class A company. We are sure they are by US standards.

F) Four walls operational focus, not a product business focus.

FORMING 62

STORMING

I looked hard and 1 watched and 1 observed and I tested, but I never saw our group go Into a storming mode, If we did, we were In It so shortly that we blltzed right through It.

I wish I knew for sure what the reason is. Because it can't be that we are all from the same company, as this is the company that can barely hold two meetings in a row without something or someone comlng unglued, Maybe It was being In Japan and having done all the study, we knew how important Wa was and we absorbed that into our group psyche. Or maybe it was just the way the experiential learning is arranged by MEAC. Or maybe we all felt so privileged to be along on the trip that there was no way any of us was going to mess it up.

There was just nothing. We weren't even close. Even the minor annoyances that might have led to it like being late for a bus or an activity, just weren't there. No one was ever late, even by a second. Just typeing this in three months later, I still find the latter difficult to believe.

The closest we got to this phase was when we put our foot down that there would be no business conducted on the Staturday we were in Kyoto. Ken was prepared to give us a seminar, but it would have to wait to Nagoya. No way it was going to happen in Kyota. We wanted every minute to take in what we could of Japanese culture.

Whatever the reasons, this group and this trip were special in that we blitzed right by the storming phase.

STORMING 63

NORMING

After one plant tour, we had learned the ropes for the learning part of the exercise. We had gotten the rhythm of the event and the pace and a feeling for the envlronment of worklng on the bus. Now It was tlme to see how we fell Into our nominal roles.

The two Ricoh plants gave us a much better feel for how the education would occur. The visit to Toshiba was a continuation of the Norming.

DAY 5: RlCOH

We had very little in our briefing package on Ricoh, just financial statistics and a news- paper article on Hlroshi Hamada, Ricoh president: "We may see a day In the not-too- distant future when a company's overseas production exceed its exports. Research and development would be carried out in Japan but actual manufacturing would take place abroad. Economics and trade considerations have made local production inevitable."

Our objective today was to get a better idea of the evolution of manufacturing excellence within a single company. Ideally we would have visited the Atsugi Plant first and then on to the Gotemba plant, but arrangements dictated the reverse. The Gotemba plant is brand new, while the Atsugi plant has been in place for twenty years.

On the trip out from Tokyo, we got our first and only view of Mt. Fuji. Sufflce it to say that Kodak and Fuji Film made out like bandits with all the film that was used trying to get just the right glimpse from a bus moving at 60 miles per hour.

1.1 GOTEMBA PLANT

1.1.1 INSIGHT ACQUISITION -

- In answer to a question about how long the shifts were, the answer came back in units of minutes not hours

- did not know what revenue out was - units is the measurement not revenue - line was pacing the operation, looked like a pull line - would clean competitors clocks as very profitable company - mariage of computers and equipment - clean work place (spit polished) - Large $ Investment in plant - not super high tech but excellent application of simplification

NORMING 65

- outstanding job in basics - conveyer system was not state of the art but good engineering - live interaction with computer data - humanware - technology is for human beings - what would happen to that plant if load was cut in half by currency variations - extremely well thought out - key vendors moved near plant locations ,. - every part from every vendor got sampled - high regard for people and peopie responsibility - engineering behind the scene is excellent - first conveyor system I have seen that worked - no dropping and chasing - automated data entry - letting employees know what is going on by putting on reader board - 80% of workforce moved to country from the city. - interesting to see QC at the end of the line - did not see high technology environnment but very quick Information flow - work flexibility (product and process) everybody can build all models

What didn't we see?

- No chairs - No personal property on line - looked like robot and people were at similar workstations - simple work flow strategy - 1.5 days Inventory - absolute cleanliness like a hospital - only two years old and only have implemented 60%- of their Ideas - every time asked a question got a detailed answer - talked to them about their schedule changes - once a month only - store data from problems - plant cost $40 million

1.2 ATSUGI PLANT

1.3 INTEGRATION

I am really frustrated with the translation problem right now. We have spent all this time and money studying, preparing, and getting over here and I feel like we have got a second rate interpreter. The interpreters from Ricoh even commented to us privately about it. I did not fully appreciate what problem I was upset about untll I came across the following:

"There is (from the third principle) the question of transduction. Here again the forrnal- informal dichotomy is critical. Once the encoding and decoding of information has been taken into account on the formal network that represents the vertical loop, people as-

'

sume that the transduction problem is solved. If it is not, then (they think) it will be overcome by the informal network. They have good reason for this belief, Insofar as

people honestly consider that eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation presents no serious problem in transduction. Yet it does. If two statemsen confront each other in person, and do not happen to have a language in common, then official interpreters are supplied In the role of transducers - and onlookers assume that the transducers are infallible machines. But they are not. Nor should anyone versed in cybernetics conceivably accept that they are.

"The matter is straightforward, but not perhaps as straightforward as it immediately looks. The two statesmen dispose very high vaiieties, on each side. Do the interpreters dispose an equivalent variety? Surely not: the Interpreters are variety attenuators, because they do not at all comprehend the nuances (states of the system) that they seek to interpret. I came to understand this myself long ago. At the age of seventeen, I was a student of philosophy; and I grappled in English with Bergson's book called Matiere et Memoire. The book made no sense at all. Therefore 1 was moved to read it in French. I discovered that the English translator -- my transducer -- was rendering the French words I'esprit, I'ame, and even le cerveau, by the same word: mind. Now this was a variety attenuator operating in the transducer - par excellence. Since then, at a maturer age, I fell into the habit of listening to a conference speaker with one ear, and listening to the transduction of his speech through the second ear -- through the ear- phones that were alleged to provide 'simultaneous translation'. This experience was shattering. I wish no harm to those who undertake the onerous task of simultaneous translation. They are excellent Ilnguists. For the sake of the argument, let us call them perfect linguists, and then they cannot be hurt. The fact is that they do not have requl- site variety as transducers. The immediate result of my experiments was to understand why it was, when my own turn came to speak, that no one laughed at my jokes.

"Now comes the point: this is not a problem of 'translation' as such, as everyone thinks. It is very precisely a problem of requisite variety. The translator Is (I just ad- mitted it) a perfect linguist. But does the translator personally comprehend - not my words -- but the number of possible states that I intend to evoke by my words. No: neither he nor she, in my experience, deploys that much variety. To continue (for a moment) in personal vein, I record the experience of correcting my interpreter. Had I enjoyed a mastery of the language involved, no interpreter would have been needed; as it was, her capability as a translator was not in doubt -- she was superb. So what happened on that occasion was not a matter of linguistlc subtlety. It was a failure of requisite variety in the transducer, because I wanted to draw a distinction that did not exist for the interpreter. It existed in the language, and she knew the language. But she did not know that I wanted to draw a distinction. Heart of the Enterprise p. 123.

We had an opportunity to visit two plants which made the same products; one older, one newer. At first glance, the new one was the place to be. It was the ultimate In everything we seem to be striving for at the height of the industrial age. Yet, everyone on the tour made the comment that they would much rather work in the Atsugi plant. It was alive; it felt like home. It was like a DEC plant. There were people laughing and smiling in the Atsugi Plant: but everyone seemed dour and robotlike in the Goternba Plant.

I have been sensitive to how much effect the physical environment has on work attitudes ever since reading Chris Alexander's Timeless Way of Building. A summary of this book is:

THE TIMELESS WAY

A building or a town will only be alive to the extent that it is governed by the timeless way.

1. It is a process which brings order out of nothing but ourselves; It cannot be attained, but it will happen of its own accord, If we will only let it in.

THE QUALITY

To seek the timeless way we must first know the'-quality without a name.

2. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of llfe and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but It cannot be named.

3. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.

4, In order to define this quality in buildings and In towns, we must begin by understanding that every place is given its character by certain patterns of events that keep on happening there.

5. These patterns of events are always interlocked with certain geometric patterns in the space. Indeed, as we shall see, each building and each town is ultimately made out of these patterns in the space, and out of nothing else: they are the atoms and the molecules from which a building or a town is made.

6. The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked In inner conflict.

7. The more living patterns there are in a place -- a room, a building, or a town -- the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more It glows, the more It has that self- maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.

8. And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety created in the presence of the fact that things pass. This is the quality itself.

THE GATE

To reach the quality without a name we must then build a living pattern language as a gate.

9. This quality In buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, bu the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from the seed.

10. The people can shape buildings for themselves, and have done it for centuries, by using languages which I call pattern languages. A pattern language gives each person who uses it the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buldings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences. -

11. These pattern languages are not confined to vlllages and farm society. All acts of building are governed by a pattern language of some sort, and the patterns In the world are there, entirely because they are created by the pattern languages which people use.

12. And, beyond that, it is not just the shape of towns and buildings which comes from pattern languages--it is their quality as well. Even the life and beauty of the most awe- inspiring great religious buildings came from the languages their builders used.

13. But in our time the languages have broken down. Since they are no longer shared, the processes which keep them deep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live.

14. To work our way towards a shared and l i h g language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life.

15. We may then gradually Improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our surroundings live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel.

16. Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building task we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connectlons among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole.

17. Then finally, from separate languages for different building tasks, we can create a larger structure still, a structure of structures, evolving constantly, which is the common language for a town. This is the gate.

THE WAY

Once we have built the gate, we can pass through it to the practice of the timeless way.

18. Now we shall begin to see in detail how the rich and complex order of a town can grow from thousands of creative acts. For once we have a common pattern language in our town, we shall all have the power to make our streets and buildings live, through our most ordinary acts. The language, like a seed, is the genetic system which gives our millions of small acts the power to form a whole.

19. Within this process, every individual act of building is a process in which space gets differentiated. It is not a process of addition, in which preformed parts are combined to create a whole, but a process of unfolding, like the evolution of an embryo, in which precedes the parts, and actually gives birth to them by splitting.

20. The process of unfolding goes step by step, one pattern at a time. Each step brings just one pattern to life; and the intensity of the result depends on the Intensity of each one of these individual steps.

21. From a sequence of these individual patterns, whole buildings with the character of nature will form themselves within your thoughts, as easily as sentences.

22. In the same way, groups of people can conceive their larger public buildings, on the ground, by following a comon pattern language, almost as if they had a single mind.

23. Once the buildings are conceived like this, they can be built, directly, from a.few simple marks made in the ground - again within a common language, but directly, and without the use of drawings.

24. Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate.

25. Finally, within the framework of a common language, millions of individual acts of building will together generate a town which is alive, and whole, and unpredictable, without control. This is the slow emergence of the quality without a name, as if from nothing. I*

26. And as the whole emerges, we shall see it take that ageless character which gives the timeless way its name, This character is a specific, morphological character, sharp and precise, which must come into being any time a building or a town becomes alive: it is the phyical embodiment, in buildings, of the quality without a name.

THE KERNEL OF THE WAY

And yet the timeless way is not complete, and will not fully generate the quality without a name, until we leave 'the gate behind.

27. Indeed this ageless character has nothing, in the end, to do with languages. The language, and the processes which stem from it, merely release the fundamental order which is native to us. They do not teach us, they only remind us of what we know already, and of what we shall discover time and time again, when we give up our ideas and opinions, and do exactly what emerges from ourselves." Timeless Way of Building

1.4 SYNTHESIS

2 DAY 6: TOSHIBA VISIT

2.1 DR. KARATSU LECTURE

NORMING 70

PERFORMING

1 DAY 7:TOKYO JUKl

1 . I INTEGRATION

Seeing the way this manufacturer of a very basic commodity, sewing machines is un- dergoing continuous improvement reminds me of Alexander's description of the repair process wlth living spaces:

"We know now, how a single act of building works. We know that any person can lay out a building for himself; that any group of people can do the same; and we know how the builders can then carry out a process of constructlon, which wlll make a unified organic whole, out of the stakes marked on the ground.

"Now we shall see how several acts of building, in a town, will generate an even more coherent and more complex whole, piecemeal -- by making sure that every act contri- butes to the order of the previous acts.

"No building is ever perfect.

"It is therefore necessary to keep changing the buildings, according to the real events which actually happen there.

"Suppose for instance, that some corner of your house is not as alive as you would like.

", . . In short, when I get a chance to start mending the garden, I can mend both these defective patterns with the same act of building. And the repairs I make are not just "repairs," but new designs, complex themselves, between the crevices of the first design.

"Or suppose that you have built a small laboratory building.

"Can you see how rich and various the parts of the building will be, when they are bullt like this?

"Each act of building, which differentiates a part of space, needs to be followed soon by further acts of building, which further differentiate the space to make it still more whole.

"When things are first built, the gaps between the parts are often left unwhole.

"But these gaps must be healed and made as whole as the parts on either side of them,

PERFORMING 71

"This goes vastly beyond the normal conception of repair.

"When we repair something In this new sense, we assume that we are going to transform it, that new wholes will be born, that, Indeed, the entire whole which is being repaired will become a different whole as the result of the repair.

"In this framework, we gain an entirely new @ew of the process through which a sequence of acts of building generates a whole.

"In order to see this clearly, let us imagine that there is somewhere a building complex, growing, over time.

"Each house starts with a small beginning -- no more that a family kitchen, with a bed alcove off one end and a kitchen counter.

"Then for the first few years, people add 100-200 square feet more each year.

"As the buildings reach maturity, the increments get smaller.

"Yet at the same time, collectively, the houses begin to generate the larger patterns which define the cluster.

"Slowly at every level, the arrangement of the wholes becomes so dense that there are no gaps between the wholes: every part, and every part between two parts, is whole.

"So the houses get their form, both as a group, and separately, as Indlvlduals, from the gradual accretion of a number of small separate acts.

"In chapter 19 1 argued that an organic whole could only be created by a dlfferentiat- ing process.

"We see now that there is a second, complementary process which produces the same results, but works piecemeal, instead.

"This process, like the simple differentiating process, is able to make wholes in which the parts are shaped according to their place.

"But this process is still more powerful: because it can make groups of buildings whlch are larger and more complex.

"And it is more powerful, above all, because it leaves no mistakes: because the gaps get filled, the small things that are wrong are gradually corrected, and finally, the whole Is so smooth and relaxed, that it will seem as though It had been there forever. It has no roughness about it, it simply lies there stretched out in time." The Timeless Way of Building.

DAY 8: MATSUSHITA

PERFORMING 72

RE-CREATING

1 DAY 9: KYOTO

1.1 INTEGRATION

"A hundred years ago, hardly anything was known of Sanskrit, Pall or Chlnese. The Ignorance of European Scholars was sufficient reason for their provinciallsm. Today, when more or less adequate translations are available In plenty, there Is not only no reason for It, there is no excuse. And yet most European and American authors of books about religion and metaphysics write as though nobody had ever thought about these subjects, except the Jews, the Greeks and the Christians of the Mediterranean basin and western Europe. This display of what, in the twentieth century, is an entirely voluntary and deliberate ignorance is not only absurd and discreditable; It is also socially dangerous. Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is a men- ace to permanent world peace. The reign of violence will never come to an end until, first, most human beings accept the same, true philosophy of life; until, second, this Perennial Philosophy is recognized as the highest factor common to all the world religions: until, third, the adherents of every religion renounce the idolatrous time- philosophies, with wich, in their own particular fatih, the Perennial Philosophy of eternity has been overlaid: until, fourth, there is a world-wide rejection of all the political pseudo-religions, which place man's supreme good in future time and therefore justify and commend the commission of every sort of present iniquity as a means to that end. If these conditions are not fulfilled, no amount of political planning, no economic blue- prints however ingeniously drawn, can prevent the recrudescence of war and revolution. " The Perennial Philosophy

2 DAY 10: TSUBAKI GRAND SHRINE

3 REFORMING

RE-CREATING 73

CONTINUING IMPROVEMENT f

1 DAY 1 I : HONDA

1.1 MCGUIRE LECURE

DAY 12: BROTHER INDUSTRIES

2.1 INTEGRATION

Several people have noticed that I take notes in several places and are particularly Interested in the function of the journal. I try to express the Importance of the note taking process for my particular method of learning. My notes are more of a memory device for the here and now that is occurring. By getting the conversations onto paper and turning the verbal medium into a visual medium I can remember for much longer periods. The journal is where I record trigger thoughts. That is as something occurs in the here and now it will trigger relationships to previous experience or perhaps cause an insight which will lead to synthesis. It is much easier for me to have these trigger thoughts when I am in an experiential learning situation then when I am by myself. Ira Progoff captures this notion in his courses on Intensive Journalling:

"The task of coming into contact with the depth and fullness of our lives is a 'solitary work' for the essence of it is privacy. The paradox is that it is not a task that can be carried through sucessfully when an individual works at it together alone. He requires the assistance of others, and especially he requires the presence of others. He requires a situation and a method that will enable him to work side by side with others while doing the solitary work that reaches deeply into the private person within himself." At a Journal Workshop, p. 52.

While I am enthralled with the integration of work, philosophy and learning, I am beginning to pick up an internal unease. An unease that is very close to that expressed by Phillip Moffitt In an article for Esquire entitled "The Dark Side of Excellence":

"We were sitting in his living room just across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, a Ilttle hill town overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was one of those scenic northern California afternoons, clean and beautiful. The man siting across from me was looking out the window at the sailboats moving below like white specks on the quiet water of the bay. It was a scene for contemplation, which was why he lived here. I was here on a search, looking for a new perspective - or maybe I just needed a cheering boost.

CONTINUING IMPROVEMENT 75

"I had become increasingly disturbed by what seems to me the trivializatlon of excellence, the hyping of success - the whole concept of 'yuppiedom,' for Instance - and the emerging tendency to measure performance in one dimension: immediate commer- cial success.

"He suddenly looked up and said, 'You know, there has to be a shadow side, a dark side, to all this media promotion of excellence.' He is president of a large graduate schoool of psychology, one of the founders of- the Aspen Institute, a former AT&T executive who has a broad background In business and venture-capital activities, one of those men who has read everything -and knows everybody but still retains a kind of naive idealism.

" 'What do you mean, a shadow side?', I asked.

"'When I first saw this phenomenon -- this preoccupation with excellence - I was very excited,' he began. 'I .felt it represented an effort to bring out the best of human capaclty and to do it in new organizational forms. But as the subject of excellence became a kind of cult the subject matter Itself became less carefully analyzed; people were merely looking backward and saying: 'Oh, this is successful; it must be an example of excellence. "

"I wanted to hear more. At Esquire we were in the midst of preparing this issue, which celebrates quality and leadership, and I did not want us to fall prey to this klnd of simplification.

"'What bothers me so much,' he said, turning back to the window and the boats, 'is that people seem to be reducing management to short-term, obsessional behavior and then equating management with leadership, so that we are being presented with the Ideal leader as someone obsessed lwth short-term results. This is not just a phenomenon in business, but It Is most obvious there because the stock market so overrewards the immediate performance. The net effect of this process is that a management team can be receiving reward and recognition at the time it is damaging the organization. In other words, this is an important subject, because how we measure things can make people and companies sick, while there Is no evidence that a wholesale greed for profit, for the bottom line, has any value in Itself for society.'

"I told him I understood his dismay. I have seen in the last fifteen years how devastat- ing it has been for many American companies trying to compete with the Japanese. But he seemed to be referring to something else, some more basic aspect of the workplace, and so I asked him to elaborate.

"'I'll give you two examples,' he continued. 'We recently conducted a study of health programs in large companies and found most companies to be very reluctant to really deal with the health of their employees. Many of their health benefits were for an executive elite, and the general health programs were not well measured and innovative because, as one corporate health official told me, 'We do not know how well they work, and we do not want to know.' Meaning the company was afraid of the expense of true responsibility. Contrast this with the Japanese management system, with its total involvement in human assets, and you have an example of the dark side of how we measure sucess. '

"'Or, as a second example, look at the burnout rate of midlevel executives in their middle and late thirties. Almost all companies have problems with this - people simply lose their enthusiasm, their passion for their work. At the same time, our society, in


emphasizing the short-term result, now has a turnover among chief executives in large companies nearly every seven years. How can a leader be concerned about his young talent's development when he will be gone before he could enjoy the benefit of invest- ing in it? That is the dark side my friend.'" Esquire December 1985, p. 43.

3 DAY 13:

4 DAY 14:

4.1 HITACHI

4.2 NISSAN

5 DAY 15:

TOKYO ELECTRIC I

ROAD WEARY

SUMITOMO

5.1 INTEGRATION

We are now at the end of our visits. There is so much that has been ingested these last two weeks that my head is spinning. To top It off this morning I came across a mind looper in Bateson:

"Let me offer you a myth.

"There was once a Garden. It contained many hundreds of species -probably in the subtropics--living in great fertility and balance, with plenty of humus, and so on. In that garden, there were two anthropoids who were more intelligent than the other animals.

"On one of the trees there was fruit, very high up, which the two apes were unable to reach. So they began to think. That was the mistake. They began to think purposively.

"By and by the he ape, whose name was Adam, went and got an empty box and put it under the tree and stepped on it, but he found he still couldn't reach the fruit. So he got another box and put it on top of the first. Then he climbed up on the two boxes and finally he got that apple.

"Adam and Eve then became almost drunk with excitement. This was the way to do things. Make a plan, ABC and you get 0.

"They then began to specialize in doing things the planned way. In effect, they cast out from the Garden the concept of their own total systemic nature and of its total systemic nature.

"After they had cast God out of the Garden, they really went to work on this purposive business, and pretty soon the topsoil disappeared. After that, several species of plants became "weedsrf and some of the animals became "pests"; and Adam found that gar- dening was much harder work. He had to get his bread by the sweat of his brow and he said. "It's a vengeful God. I should never have eaten that apple."


"Moreover, there occurred a qualitative change in the relationship between Adam and Eve, after they had discarded God from the Garden. Eve began to resent the business of sex and reproduction. Whenever these rather basic phenomenon intruded upon her now purposive way of living, she was reminded of the larger life which had been kicked out of the Garden. So Eve began to resent sex and reproduction and when It came to parturition she found this process very painful. She said this, too, was due to the vengeful nature of God. She even heard a Voice say "In pain shalt thou bring forth" and Thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and 'he shall rule over thee."

"The blblical version of this story, from which I have borrowed extensively, does not explain the extraordinary perversion of values, whereby the woman's capacity for love comes to seem a curse Inflicted by the deity.

"Be that as it may, Adam went on pursuing his purposes and finally invented the free- enterprise system. Eve was not for a long time allowed to participate In this because she was a woman. But she jolned a bridge club and there found an outlet for her hate."

"In the next generation, they again had trouble with love. Cain, the inventor and innova- tor, was told by God that "His [Abel's] desire shall be unto thee and thou shalt rule over him." So he killed Abel.

"A parable, of course, is not data about human behavior. It is only an explanatory device. But I have built into it a phenomenon which seems to be almost universal when man commlts the error of purposive thinklng and disregards the systemic nature of the world with which he must deal. This phenomenon is called by the psychologists "pro- jection." The man, after all, has acted according to what he thought was common sense and now he finds himself in a mess. He does not quite know what caused the mess and he feels that what has happened Is somehow unfair. He still does not see himself as part of the system In which the mess exists, and he either blames the rest of the system or he blames himself. In my parable Adam comines two sorts of nonsense: the notion "I have sinned" and the notion "God is vengeful."

"If you look at the real situations in our world where the systemic nature of the world has been ignored in favor of purpose or common sense, you will find a rather similar reaction. President Johnson is, no doubt, fully aware that he has a mess on his hands, not only in Vietnam but in other parts of the national and International ecosystems; and I am sure that from where he sits it appears that he followed his purposes with common sense and that the mess must be due elther to the wickedness of others or to his own sin or to some combination of these, according to his temperament.

"And the terrible thing about such situations Is that invevitably they shorten the time span of all planning. Emergency is present or only just around the corner; and longterm wisdom must therefore be sacrificed to expediency, even though there Is a dim awareness that expediency will never give a long-term solution."

By stepping outside of our Western culture and our Digital culture, I am. beginning to understand Ackoff's reconception of the corporation as a social institution:

The Corporation Reconceived

"The Industrial Revolution took place in the United States in the last century. As Indus- trial enterprises grew in size and number a conceptual model was needed. Not surpris- ingly, the concept that emerged corresponded to the prevailing concept of the world. Following Newton, the world was conceptualized as a machine created by God to do


His work; the function of man, as part of that machine, was to serve God's purposes. Therefore, industrial enterprises were first thought of as machines created by their 'gods,' the owners, to serve their purpose in creating these enterprises, whlch was to make a profit. An enterprise was seen as having no purpose of Its own but as serving that of its owner. Within an enterprise the owner was a virtual god, with almost limitless power, subject to almost no externally imposed constraints. Like a machine, the ideal enterprise was one that could operate independently of its environment.

"Workers were viewed and treated as replaceable machine parts. This treatment was possible beccause (1) workers had virtually no source of income other than employment, (2) they were poorly educated and had low levels of aspiration, (3) few skills were required, and (4) replacements were plentiful.

"By World War I social and economic development required a change in the concept of an enterprise. If enterprises were to take advantage of the opportunities for growth that had become available to them, they required external financing. Owners had to choose between retaining complete control and restricting growth, and sharing ownership to obtain the resources required to grow as rapidly as possible. Many chose to share ownership and 'went public.' 'God' disappeared, was dispersed, and became an abstract spirit. As had occurred when the God of the Western World disppeared 20 centuries earlier, a clergy - management -- was created to serve as an intermediary between the workers and 'god.' The managers knew the will of the owners as the clergy knew that of God, by revelation, and transmitted it to the workers.

"Meanwhile the workers had become more educated, had the beginnings of social security, were increasingly protected by unions, and were more difficult to replace because of the greater skills required of them. They could no longer be treated as replaceable machine parts.

"These conditions led to the reconceptualization of the busines enterprise as a corpoa- tion - derived from corpus, body -- therefore, as an organism. Like all organisms, corporations had an overriding purpose of their own, survival, for which growth was taken to be essential. As Peter Drucker said, profit came to be viewed as oxygen is for a human being: necessary for its survival but not the reason for it. The CEO became the head of the firm and management, its brain. Departments were thought of much as bodily organs and workers, as cells. Their health and safety became major concerns that were reflected in labor legislation and contracts. The environment was viewed as a purposeless self-renewing source of resources and a receptacle for waste.

"World War II and a permissively raised generation of well-educated and socially secure workers changed all this. Government and such special interest groups as ecolo- gists and consumer advocates began to demand responsible behavior from corporations. Well-educated workers, increasingly alienated by the machinelike labor required of them, began to demand more satisfying and challenging work and opportunities for personal development.

"As a result, industrial enterprises are once again being reconceptualized, this time as social systems. An enterprise viewed as a social system is considered (1) to be a part of a larger social system (society) that has purposes of its own and (2) to contain Indivi- duals who have purposes of their own. The purpose of an enterprise is apparently becoming one of serving the needs and desires of all its stakeholder, not the stockholders alone. Survival and growth are increasingly becoming a means to this end, not ends in themselves. When an enterprise increases its ability and its desire to serve its stakeholders, it develops. Development is more and more commonly taken to be the appropriate prupose of an enterprise.


"This social-systemic, service-oriented view of a corporation is completely different from the organismic view of it as an entity served by passive environments and stakeholders, Today, employees, including managers, are Increasingly believed to have the largest investment in firms and therefore, to be their most important stakeholders. From society's point of view corporations are instruments for producing and distributing wealth, primarily by employment. Therefore, the provision of jobs Is perceived as one of their major social responsibilities. ,

"Of what significance is this evolution of the conception of industrial enterprises? It Is this: in a society that views and treats corporations as social systems, as instruments for sewing their stakeholders' interests, corporations that are managed as though they were machines or organisms are not likely to survive and grow." Management in Small Doses p. 16-19.


MOURNING

1 END OF MISSION DINNER

2 MCGUIRE'S MISSION SUMMARY

3 DEBRIEFING

It was real tough to get up this morning. The dinner last night was a gracious flnale. The drinks afterwards in Mlke Hasty's room were a lettlng down of our halr after the formallty of the dinner. But I gotta get up early to get the '&(&'&' bags packed and to do my presentation.

I had really run my mouth yesterday afternoon in a conversation with Steve Townsend and Susan Williams. Somebody needed to give a summary presentation on what we had learned about Human Relations in the two weeks. Since Susan wasn't going to be there in the morning, she asked if Steve or I would give it. I volunteered by saying "I'II be happy to. Somebody has got to do a right brain presentation sooner or later. I'm tired of these bulletted lists of facts."

Those were fighting words for Townsend, "What do you mean right brain presentation?"

"Pictures. Man. Pictures," I rattled back. " 1 am so tired of these two weeks with thls crew of twenty terminal analytics doing nothing but provide lists and lists and lists of facts. A picture is worth 50,000 of these kinds of words."

Steve wasn't buying it.

"Look I'll make you a bet," I proposed. "You go back and put together a summary presentation for the two weeks however you would normally do it. And I'II do the same. I'll bet you whatever you want to bet, that my presentation will be remembered and yours won't. "

Looking at Steve I had clearly stepped over the lines of decency. I was in one of my seldom rlght, but never in doubt modes, So I changed the proposition, "Look I've watched you the last several weeks and you are superb at sifting through a lot of data and getting at what is relevant and then listing it out. I'm terrible at that. But what I am really good at is taking a sifted list and putting it into a picture that will be remembered. If you are willing, let's work together on the presentation. You do the sifting, and I'II do the picture."

MOURNING 81

"Now, you've got a deal," replied Steve quite eagerly. "I'II get the list to you tonite."

I wasn't quite sure what form the picture would take but I knew that It had something to do with the triangle, circle and square theme. So I suggested to Steve, "I stlll don't have a good picture In mind, but I 'm pretty sure it is going to be organized in threes. See If there is a natural breakdown of the material into threes."

Off he went. I then turned to Susan and did a little brainstorming with her on what the picture might look like. She suggested that somehow the picture should reflect the un- certainty of the new generation of Japanese who didn't seem to be conforming as well to the old. Click. I know just the thing. I'II relate It back to Jean Pearce's showing us the crack in the piece of China.

I had gotten as far as my creative juices were going to take me. I had also backed myself into a creative corner.

At dinner Steve gave me a one sheet summary of the last two weeks of human resources observations. .His work was impeccable. Now all I needed was the picture.

After sleeping on it, the last puzzle piece fell Into place. Mt. Fuji would be the trlangle. Talk about symbolism all over the place. Now my only concern was had I outsmarted myself by being clever too far.

After scrambling to get all my packing done and get a call in to the States, It was time to go to the annex for our last official study group meeting.

It was a little sad this morning because all three of the Burlington contingent, Wettstein, Bourdeau, and Williams had already left. We started the session off by going around the room with each of us relating what the trip had meant to us personally. Emotions were pretty strong this morning; none of us really wanted this learning experience to end. But most important, we didn't want to lose the close associations that had formed over the three weeks. Tears were the order of the day for several of us, and tight chests made it real difficult for each of us to speak when it was our turn.

I wanted so badly to let each one know how much I had grown and learned on the trip. For me most of that learning was the result of the interactions with the group right In front of me. The exposure to the Japanese companies provided the screen on which the movie we created could play, but It was this group and their willingness to share that was the heart of the experiential learning.

[[[Insert excerpts from the dictaphone tapes]]]

Steve Shepherd was up first with his summary of what we could bring back to the states and apply directly, that is, what were the advantages that we had that we need to ensure that we keep.

Finally it was my turn. I was the last one. Somehow I think Townsend managed to make sure that I was last, hoping that I could summarize all of the trip not just the Human Relations.

No matter how much 1 tried to take deep breaths to calm myself down, I was shaking like a leaf. You would think that after all these years of public speaking that I could control my nerves a lot better. No such luck. Today was especially difficult because I wanted to touch to the core of what the visit to Japan had meant to me and to be able to share with these new friends something other. than words.

I looked out: paused for a few seconds; took a deep breath and started tentatively.

MOURNING 82

"Whenever I take a trip, I always take several books with me. I never conciously stop to think whether the books have something to do with the trip. I just need something to occupy the plane flights and those hours In the hotel room when I can't sleep. I'd like to share with you a short excerpt from one of those books. I couldn't believe how apro- pos it is to this group, at this time and in this place."

I then read this excerpt from Edward T. Hall's The Silent Language:

"Culture hides much more than it reveals, and#.strangely enough what It hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants. Years of study have convinced me that the real job is not to understand foreign culture but to understand our own. I am also convinced that all that one ever gets from studying foreign culture is a token understanding. The ultimate reason for such study is to learn more about how one's own system works. The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness - an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference."

I tried to look up several times during the reading, but I couldn't. I was shaking and so hoping that it would be accepted. After finishing, I looked out and the expressions were so heartwarming I wanted to just sit there and bask in the reflections. Several people started at once, "Read that again so we can copy it down!" "That summarizes so well what we have just been through, where did you get it?"

I waited and then said "I'll finish up with this at the end and I'll make sure I include it in the journal."

I then put up the first overhead. Starting from the center and working outward, "Just as Mt. Fuji is the center and focal point for the Japanese geography, employee relations are at the center of Japanese corporations. Surrounding this focus Is the workgroup itself sometimes called Quality Circles and sometimes called SGIA. Yet, just as people are important, so Is the environment that exists within the plant, and within the Japanese homeland."

"But I think the key word for me as I reflected on the last several weeks was one that Ken mentioned when we first met - Sometimes," I added. "As I think about the plants that we have visited, the geographies that we have toured, I see a lot of contradictions end differences. There is certainly nothing black and white like I expected before I came over."

I then positioned an overlay on top of the previous transparency. "If we look at the next level of observations," I went on, "we see some very appropriate summary statements. At the heart of Employee Relations is 'the nail that sticks up gets pounded down.' We saw that everywhere we went, that the individual is subservient to the group. But what wasn't so obvious until after the weekend at the Shinto Shrine and then seeing Brother industries is that for each individual worker there is a clear relationship between God and man, between employer and employee, and between parent and child. What really struck me with full force is the congruence between these three relationships, that they are all viewed as the same and that the relationship is buried deep in the cultural belief system."

"As we move outward to the role of the group within the corporation we see the symbols for long term investment for long term growth - the seed, sprout, trunk, flower, and fruit. The Japanese have brought the mentality of the citrus farmer to the corporate world - what I plant today will be harvested .in ten years. The Hop, Step and Jump of

MOURNING 83

HUMAN RESOURCES

QC Circles C S G I A )

" SOMETIMES"

HUMAN RESOURCES

C l eanl iness and MA Harmony between Tidiness are the Way t o Purity. Workplace and

Simplified work flows

Attention t o d e t a i l

Order machines, and ~ n v i r ~ & n e n t software.

" SOMETIMES"

BROTHER - "A period of steady equilibrium has replaced the era of high growth. Quality over quantity. I@

THE N E W R E A L I S M

the Quality Circles at Brother were correlated with the physical life, lifetrend, and life mission of the Shinto value system. Finally we see the reward system and how it lnter- twines with the focus on the team, on visible recognition, and the need for self- development to help one's team members, a self-development that will lead to greater group glory."

"Where does this path and journey to self-development lead?" I asked rhetorically. "To Wa, to group harmony. Harmony between the porkplace and nature. Harmony between people, machines and software. This harmony starts with a value system that embraces cleanliness and tidiness as a symbol of purity. This value leads to the simplification of work flows. to the attention to detail, to an orderliness."

"Yet within this vision and embracement of cultural values also lies a firm grip on current reality," I continued. "'Brother Industries expressed it quite well. A period of steady equilibrium has replaced the era of high growth. Quality over quantity. The New Realism. I "

As 1 got ready to turn off the overhead projector, someone asked what the jagged line was running through the right side of the picture, Now I knew I was losing it. How could I possibly forget that? "Thanks for the prompt," I acknowledged. "The jagged -line Is symbolic of a rent in the fabric of the Japanese culture. We have heard from several sources these last several weeks of the discontent amongst the current generation of merely accepting previous ways. Work may not be the dominant drive of the future, like the past. Concern with family is becoming very Important to young Japanese. And this culture really hasn't embraced a meaningful roie for women. Also as the pressures mount from the outside world to open up what is perceived as a closed culture and market, we don't know what effects that will have."

One of our study books had an observation about this situation: "It was entirely obvious that Father Pittau deplored this cast of mind and that he attributed it at least in part to the changed atmosphere of the Japanese home. 'So far,' he said a bit grimly, "companies and government agencies have been able to take these youngsters and reshape them, giving them the traditional social formation In which loyalty to one's company or ministry is paramount. But already It's not so easy as it used to be to instill a spirit of service in young people in this country. And it could get harder and harder." The Japanese Mind p. 137.

"So the jagged line represents the crack that I see in the superb Japanese economic machine," I observed. "The question is will the machine break apart or will it be like the piece of china that Jean Pearce showed us two weeks ago and the crack will be covered in gold as the Japanese adapt to this New Reality."

"It is easy to create a cultural change when there is a crisis, but how do you keep it going when affluence or the overriding vision Is achieved? Since the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan has used the industrial countries in the West as a model for its vision. It has now reached that vision. What does Japan do now to create a new vision to carry forward? Will Japan focus on quality of life with a unique combination of eastern and western philosophies or will Japan slide backwards?" I finished.

If communications are the results that you get, all I had to do was look at the faces In the room to know that I had shared a piece of me with a group of the greatest professionals in the world. Thanks for letting me share this journey with all of you.

As a final gift, I offer a summary of the trip in the form of a brief poem:

Impressions of Japan

MOURNING 84

Sameness. It's OK. I can survive. Dlfference. I'm not alike. I will thrive. Spread out. Flat. Hazy. Grace to graciousness. Chopsticks - a silent, gentle, natural dinner companion. Clean. Slow. Fast. Wa - the synergistic harmony.

<,

The nail that sticks UP GETS POUNDED DOWn

God and Man Parent and Child

Company and Employee Here and Now

Nature. The garden - holistic view, narrow focus. Elegance through simplicity:

By' movement By set menu By flowing production

Discipline. Triangle. Circle. Square. Just in Timeliness "Herro, cutie pie." "Been in Japan long?" Rhythm. Incense. Water to smoke to purify. Form and function integrated. Both - And: not Either - Or. Together. We need each other!

MOURNING 85

MOVING FORWARD

"Among the conversations of the Buddha known as the Medium Length Dialogues, there appears a discourse on the value of the vehlcle of the doctrine. First the Buddha describes a man who, like himself or any of his followera, becomes fllled with a loathlng of the perils and delights of secular existence. That man decides to quit the world and cross the stream of life to the far land of spiritual safety, Collecting wood and reeds, he builds a raft, and by this means succeeds in attaining the other shore. The Buddha confronts his monks, then, with the question.

"'What would be your opinion of this man,' asks the Buddha, 'would he be a clever man, If, out of gratitude for the raft that has carried him across the stream to safety, he, having reached the other shore, should cling to it, take it on his back, and walk about with the weight of It?'

"The monks reply. 'No, certainly the man who would do that would not be a clever man. '

"The Buddha goes on. 'Would not the clever man be the one who left the raft (of no use to him any longer) to the current of the stream, and walked ahead without turning back to look at it? Is It not simply a tool to be cast away and forsaken once it has served the purpose for which it is made?'

"The disciples agree that this is the proper attitude to take toward the vehicle, once it has served its purpose.

"The Buddha then concludes. 'In the same way the vehicle of the doctrine is to be cast away and forsaken, once the other shore of Enlightenment (nirvana) has been attained."

The true leader, like Wordsworth's 'Happy Warrior':

Looks forward, persevering to the last, From well to better, daily self-surpast.

MOVING FORWARD 87

REFERENCES

There Is so much study that has gone into the preparation for the understanding of what is going on In our own company and for what we experienced on the Japanese study mission. There are hundreds of books, articles, videotapes, Interviews, and co- workers who have contributed to my own experience and thinking. How do you represent the key references? A simple linear listing of references in alphabetical order doesn't seem to do justice to the relative importance of the references or even give a good idea of where the reference fits. Taking an example from Stafford Beer's two- dimensional representation of a reference list, I offer the diagram on the next page. The center of the circle is meant to be our target of achieving continuing improvement in our quest for vital systems. The references are arranged intuitively in their contribu- tion towards my understanding of what a vital system is.

REFERENCES 89

Paradigm S h i f t

B ibl iogr aphy

-1 people

Christopher

Bateson

Abbeglen

McGuire 86

Processes

MEAC and CSM Study Mission References

Books

Abbeglen, J.C. and Stalk, G., Kaisha, The Japanese Corporation, Basic Books, New York, 1986.

Christopher, R. C., The Japanese Mind, Random r House, New York, 1984.

McGuire, K.J., Impressions From Our Most Worthy Competitor, American Production and Inventory Society, 1984.

McGuire, K.J. and Johansen, P., Continuous Improvement, Rudra Press, 1986.

Vogel, E.. Japan as Number One, Lessons for America, Harvard University Press, 1980.

Articles

Paradigm Shift References

Ackoff, R., Creating the Corporate Future, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1981.

Ackoff, R., Management in Small Doses, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1986.

Alexander, C., The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979.

Bateson, G., Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Ballantine Books, New York, 1972.

Beer, S., Heart of the Enterprise, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1979.

Brand, S., The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, Viking, New York, 1987.

Buzan, T., Use Both Sides of Your Brain, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1974.

Czinkata, M. R., and Woronoff, J., Japan's Market: The Distribution System, Praeger, New York, 1986.

Gallwey, W.T., The Inner Game of Tennis, Bantam Books, New York, 1974.

Goldratt, E.M. and Cox, J., The Goal, North River Press, Croton-on-Hudson, NY, 1984.

Goldratt, E.M., and FOX, R.E., The Race, North River Press, Croton-on-Hudson, NY, 1986.

Halberstam, D., The Reckoning, Avon Books, New York, 1986.

Hall, E.. The Silent Language, Anchor PresslDoubleday, Garden City, NY, 1959.

Hall, E. and Hall, M., Hidden Differences, Anchor PresslDoubleday, Garden City, NY, 1987.

Huxley, A., The Perennial Philosophy, Harper and Row, New York, 1944.

Kamata, S., Japan in the Passing Lane, Pantheon Books, New York, 1982.

Jacques, E., The Fonn of Time, Crane Russak, New York, 1981.

Musashi, M., A Book of Five Rings: GO RIN NO SHO

Progoff, I., At a Journal Workshop, Dialogue House Library, New York, 1975.

REFERENCES 90

Strassman, P., Information Payof, The Free Press, New York, 1985.

Stryk, L. and Ikemoto, T., Zen Poetry, Penguin Books, 1977.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Delacorte Press, New York, 1983.

Suzuki, T., Japanese and the Japanese: Words in Culture, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1973.

t

Thurow, L., The Management Challenge: Japanese Views, The MIT Press, 1985.

Trevanian, Shibumi, Ballantine, New York, 1979.

Walton. M., The Deming Management ~ e t h o d , Dodd. Mead and Co., New York. 1986.

Yoshho, M.Y., and Lifson, T.B., The Invisible Link: Japan's Sogo Shosha and the Organization of Trade, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1986.

Internal Digital Publications

Mantos, P., CSM Roadmap: Excellence at Manufacturing, 1987.

Mantos, P., CSM: Plant Managers Guide to Successful MRP I1 Implementation, 1985.

Walter, E., Experiential Learning: Management Development through Outward Bound, 1986,

Walter, E., Thinking Differently, 1986.

REFERENCES 91

ADDITIONS TO CHRONICLE <.

There are several things I would like to include in the chronicle if you are willing:

1. Excerpts from the Canon Personnel Handbook if someone still has it.

2. The rest of Ed Sullivan's Bus Notes

3. Steve Townsend's and Jerry Linsky's dictaphone notes (if they are transcribed)

4. The small group summary notes from Ed Turcotte (in electronic form, as It will save much typing)

5. Excerpts from the final thoughts at the last Saturday meeting that were on Ken McGuire's dictaphone.

6. Any reflections, notes or thoughts or trip reports like Joan Coulson's.

7. 1 would like to do some debriefing interviews if anyone would like to volunteer. Like what has stuck with you since the trip. What work changes? What personal changes?

8. Dld anyone ever receive copies of the videotapes we were promised from Tokyo Electric or Brother?

9. 1 would like to include a raft of pictures in the chronicle - has anyone sorted out the best of the best.

ADDITIONS TO CHRONICLE 93

paradigm shift - human-centered design...this chronicle describes a journey of discovery of one...

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