Dreaming About Numbers

by Roger A.P. Fielding, BENCHMARKS

Benchmark numbers describing the performance of aluminum extrusion operations were presented in the Granco Clark Newsletter. These have elsewhere been described as “Dream Numbers.” Not so! The numbers are real. But, where did the obsession with “numbers” come from?

Sometime after the Second World War, the euphoria of victory, the grand scheme to connect North America with the Interstate Highway system, and the post-war growth of the Big Three automotive companies, American manufacturing lost its way.

In spite of leading the developments in computing, and the apparent fulfillment of Moore’s law—that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every 18 months—the strides in communication systems, and the achievement of computer-integrated manufacturing systems, Japan—which we all thought had “lost”—roared past!

Soon, we were watching NBC’s documentary—“If they can do it, why can’t we,” which described the revolution in quality which propelled the Japanese automobile companies—led by Toyota, from nothing to something approaching “world domination.”

When I first visited Japan in 1982, I was introduced to automated warehousing and distribution systems, an “unmanned” factory producing machine tools, and extrusion presses with automated handling and stacking systems. On presses operated by two people, they were extruding sections with walls little over thirty-thousands thick, which were then transferred to anodizing lines operated by two men, and fabricated into windows on semi-automated production lines.

I was introduced to Japanese food and customs by caring hosts, ate Sushi, bathed in water which seemed hot enough to cook in, traveled on the Shinkansen high-speed trains, and missed the point! I was taken in by the extrusion presses, the automation and the thickness of the extrusions! I carried one of the windows back to North America, described the trip to our extrusion plant managers, pointed out the thickness of the aluminum, and was greeted with disbelief! Even a follow-up by an “un-biased” observer team, who saw all that I saw—and more—failed to reveal the secret of Japan’s success.

It was only much later, when traveling between, and working in numerous die shops and extrusion plants, auditing their processes and manufacturing practices that understanding it came to me. I tried to describe it in the following piece which first appeared in Light Metal Age.(1)

A Measure of Japanese Quality:
Tokyo: Wednesday, 28 January 1998

It’s a clear, cold morning, and I’m heading out of Tokyo on the Shinkansen Super Express to visit a machine tool builder. I deliberately arrive over an hour early for my train.

The tracks next to me and the adjacent platforms serve the Tokaido and San-yo Shinkansen tracks which run 730 miles (1175 km) from Tokyo through Shin-Osaka to Hakata on the southernmost main island of Kyushu. Three levels of service are provided: the Kodama trains, which stop at all stations; the Hikari trains, with faster limited service; and the fastest—the all aluminum Nozomi, which was introduced in 1992.

The Nozomi covers the 340 miles (550 km) from downtown Tokyo to Shin Osaka in 2 hours 30 minutes, at an average speed of 140 miles per hour (220 km/hr). And, the next 390 miles (630km) to Hakata in another two and a half hours, at an average speed of 170 miles per hour (270 km/hr). The 730 miles (1180km) from Tokyo to Hakata is covered in five hours. The Shinkansen trains operate from 6:00 a.m. to midnight each day, with 33 trains going the full distance from Tokyo to Hakata each day. They are safe, frequent, fast, comfortable and punctual, with the result that close to 370,000 people take one of the over 200 trains traveling between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka every day, relegating air travel to a mere 5% of the market. For comparison, the distance between Tokyo and Shin Osaka is the same as traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, from Washington to Boston (or Detroit), or from New Orleans to Houston. The journey from Tokyo to Hakata is the same as New York to Atlanta (or Chicago), San Francisco to Seattle, or Tampa to St Louis.

Every day, the surface railways and subways which serve Tokyo move many of its thirty million inhabitants in and out of the city in rapid, timely fashion. Operated by different companies, the movements are integrated to allow an individual traveler to change from one to another with minimum inconvenience.

If the trains are so punctual what am I doing on the platform at 8:54, waiting for a train which doesn’t leave until 10:10? I’m getting the measure of Japanese quality. For, in the next 76 minutes, 28 trains going to and from Osaka will arrive and depart from this and the adjacent platforms. Most will be serviced at the platforms, by crews that clean, replace linen seat covers, and turn the seats; and by catering crews who will replenish the canteens, and then board the train as part of the new crew to serve the passengers. All trains will arrive and depart to the second and they will stop within inches of their designated places at the platforms. And, some 250 persons each minute (about 30,000 an hour) will arrive and depart. People will get to their appropriate departure points just-in-time, totally dependent on the local train and sub-way connections to make it happen. To do this, all the trains and subways which service the 30 million inhabitants of greater Tokyo, and for that matter, the people all over Japan, must operate at the same level of quality.

As we all now know, it’s all about quality. The realization that achieving “Six-Sigma” quality—less than 3.5 errors per million operations—is essential to having everything come together in a manufacturing system, or minimizing the delays in a transportation system. As the rail systems in Japan are extended further and move faster, travel by air and road—still the prevailing modes of travel in North America—is being displaced by the train. People are traveling from place to place in transportation systems which measure on-time performance in seconds. They can work, meet and conference on the trains, and arrive at their destinations faster all because of the total quality of the systems.

China is building its own high-speed rail systems. When will India follow suit?

Six-Sigma quality is not unheard of in India, just consider the performance of the Dabbawallahs which far exceeds this standard: “…a mostly illiterate army of 5000 lunch deliverers, who each day ferry 170,000 meals between workers’ homes and offices in Mumbai, India, have an error rate of just one in six million deliveries. A local business school is studying them as an example of giving impeccable service without complex technology.” In transit, “…each lunch changes hands up to four times.” They “…use a complex system of colors and marks to tell runners which building, floor and office to deliver the meals to.” (2)

(1) Fielding, Roger A. P., The Japanese Aluminum Extrusion Industry. Light Metal Age, vol 56, nos. 5,6. June 1998, pp 6-19.

(2) Anon. “Following a Lunch,” Macleans Magazine, May 22 ’06, p 14

BENCHMARKS conducts operations audits of, and designs state-of-the-art remelt and casting, die-making and extrusion plants.