在豐田汽車最古老的廠房一個角落，人力已取代機器人，把炙熱的金屬塊鍛造成汽車曲柄軸，對河合滿來說這是豐田未來希望所繫。
河合滿是在豐田服務長達50年的老兵，不久前獲社長豐田章男重用，交付他重振豐田工廠工藝的重任。河合滿說：「我們必須更紮實、更回歸根本，更專精我們的手工技術，並進一步發揚光大。我還是個新手時，有經驗的師傅被尊稱為神，他們能打造任何東西。」
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汽車產業專家萊克爾說：「豐田把工廠員工視為藝匠，必須不斷磨鍊和提升工藝水準。」萊克爾曾撰寫八本有關豐田的書，並在去年訪問河合滿。回歸製造工藝凸顯 57歲的豐田章男正致力於重新打造由他祖父豐田喜一郎創辦的公司。他承諾把提升品質與效能再度列為豐田的優先要務，取代一味追求成長的心態。
這家全球最大汽車製造商正執行三年凍結興建新廠的計畫，儘管該計畫可能影響短期銷售成長，使通用和福斯有機會挑戰豐田的龍頭地位。
Bloomberg News
'Gods' Make Comeback at Toyota as Humans Steal Jobs From Robots
A
worker welds an automobile part in the chassis manufacturing department
at a Toyota Motor Corp. plant in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
Inside
Toyota Motor Corp.’s oldest plant, there’s a corner where humans have
taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into
crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai’s vision of the future.
“We
need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual
skills and further develop them,” said Kawai, a half century-long
company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship
at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to
be called gods, and they could make anything.” These gods, or Kami-sama in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota’s next step forward is counter-intuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across Japan so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.
“Toyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,” said Jeff Liker, who has written eight books on Toyota and visited Kawai last year. “In almost every company you would visit, the workers’ jobs are to feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down.”
The return of the Kami-sama is emblematic of how Toyoda, 57, is remaking the company founded by his grandfather as the CEO has pledged to tilt priorities back toward quality and efficiency from a growth mentality. He’s reining in expansion at the world’s-largest automaker with a three-year freeze on new car plants.
GM Recalls
The importance of following through on that push has been underscored by the millions of cars General Motors Co. has recalled for faulty ignition switches linked to 13 deaths.“What Akio Toyoda feared the company lost when it was growing so fast was the time to struggle and learn,” said Liker, who met with Toyoda in November. “He felt Toyota got big-company disease and was too busy getting product out.”
While the freeze and spread of manual work may bear fruit in the long run, it could come at the expense of near-term sales growth and allow GM to Volkswagen AG challenge Toyota by deepening their foothold in markets such as China.
Toyota slipped 0.6 percent to 5,758 yen at the close of Tokyo trading, compared with the 1.6 percent decline by the benchmark Topix Index. The stock has fallen 10 percent this year.
The effort comes as Toyota overhauls vehicle development, where the world’s largest carmaker will shift to manufacturing platforms that could cut costs by 30 percent. It also underscores Toyota’s commitment to maintain annual production of 3 million vehicles in Japan.
100 Workspaces
Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago.
Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.
Machine Masters
The work extends beyond crankshafts. Kawai credits manual labor for helping workers at Honsha improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts.Though Kawai doesn’t envision the day his employer will rid itself of robots -- 760 of them take part in 96 percent of the production process at its Motomachi plant in Japan -- he has introduced multiple lines dedicated to manual labor in each of Toyota’s factories in its home country, he said.
“We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,” Kawai said. “To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”
Kawai, 65, started with Toyota during the era of Taiichi
Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System envied by the auto
industry for decades with its combination of efficiency and quality.
That means Kawai has been living most of his life adhering to principles
of kaizen, or continuous improvement, and monozukuri, which translates
to the art of making things.
Toyoda’s Test
“Fully automated machines don’t evolve on their own,” said Takahiro Fujimoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Manufacturing Management Research Center. “Mechanization itself doesn’t harm, but sticking to a specific mechanization may lead to omission of kaizen and improvement.”Toyoda turned to Kawai to replicate the atmosphere at Toyota’s Operations Management Consulting Division, established in 1970 by Ohno. Early in his career, Toyoda worked in the division, whose principles are now deployed at Toyota plants and its parts suppliers to reduce waste and educate employees.
Newcomers to the division such as Toyoda would be given three months to complete a project at, say, the loading docks of a parts supplier, which their direct boss could finish in three weeks, Liker said. The next higher up could figure out the solution in a matter of three days.
“But they wouldn’t tell him the answer,” Liker said of Toyoda’s time working within the division. “He had to struggle, and they’d give him three months. He told me that’s what he thought Toyota lost in that period of time when it was growing so fast. That was his main concern.”
Big Penalty
During its rise to the top of the automotive industry -- Toyota has set a target for 2014 to sell more than 10 million vehicles, a milestone no automaker has ever crossed -- the company was increasing production at the turn of the century by more than half a million vehicles a year.A year after the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 sent car demand tumbling, Toyota began recalling more than 10 million vehicles to fix problems linked to unintended acceleration, damaging its reputation for quality.
Last month, the company agreed to pay a record $1.2 billion penalty to end a probe by the U.S. Justice Department, which said Toyota had covered up information and misled the public at the time. Lawmakers are now considering fines and suggesting criminal penalties for companies after GM took more than a decade to disclose defects with its cars.
In the aftermath of its crisis, Toyoda has paused from announcing any new car-assembly plants as GM and VW push for further spending on new capacity.
In the years leading up to the recalls, Kawai had also been increasingly concerned Toyota was growing too fast, he said. One way for him to help prevent such a recurrence is to help humans keep tabs on the machines.
“If there is ever a technology that’s flawless and could always make perfect products, then we will be ready and willing to install that machine,” Kawai said. “There’s no machine that is eternally stable.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Craig Trudell in Tokyo at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net; Yuki Hagiwara in Tokyo at yhagiwara1@bloomberg.net; Ma Jie in Tokyo at jma124@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net Jeffrey D Grocott
豐田章男(Akio Toyoda)
日本不二越將在富山事業所的多關節機器人生産線中引進可以進行固定螺絲等零部件組裝操作的機器人。組裝工序的70%實現了自動化，人手可以減半。相 關使用機器人的計劃將在3月正式實施。今年夏天計劃在中國江蘇省的工廠也引進該機器人。安川電機也正在通過使用機器人技術來強化生産，以此來提高效率和質 量。
不二越將在小型多關節機器人生産線中導入由自主生産的3台多關節機器人所組成的操作系統。除了用於固定螺絲等重要工序之外，還將用於零件的嵌入以及搬運工作。
根據客戶要求不同，配線也會有所不同，這類工序仍由人工操作。其他將近70%的工序將由機器人來負責。在保持月生産量200台不變的基礎上可以削減一 半的操作人員。機器人可以實現24小時工作，擁有快速靈活應對增産要求的優點。到今年夏天為止，位於江蘇省張家港市的工廠也將引進同樣的系統。
不二越和安川電機從去年開始，就先於其他日本製造商，在工業用機器人需求不斷擴大的中國開始了生産。使用機器人進行操作可以保證産品的質量，因此將運用在日本積累的經驗，在中國工廠導入相同的系統，使中國工廠生産出的産品可以和日本保持相同的品質。
安川電機于去年秋季，在其北九州市的本社工廠的小型多關節機器人生産線中，將用於零件組裝的機器人倍增到了20台左右。削減了約五分之一的人手。位於 江蘇省常州市工廠中的部分生産線，通過採用機器人，實現了30%左右的組裝自動化。今後將會繼續堅持通過機器人來提高自動化水平的方針。
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