Relationship building with japanese manufacturer

Relationship Building with Japanese manufacturer

Preface

§ To establish a relationship with Japanese manufacturer, first thing we have to do is to understand them. Because without understanding them there wonʼt be firm relationship with them. We sometimes make a mistake by focusing on presenting about us.

§ During the presentation, if our words wonʼt hit their mind, the time spent was useless for both. And they will feel the meeting with us is worthless.

§ To avoid that, we first need to understand about Japanese manufacturer and their commonsense about quality. This slides can give you some hint of Japanese manufacturersʼ common thoughts and beliefs.

2016/10/13 Copyright 2016 Yuichi Moriwaki 2

Understand why Japanese products have high qualityAlmost everybody knows that “Made-in-Japan” is the label of high quality. But, while achieving high quality, the price of products are reasonable and inexpensive. What is the secret? Why Japanese manufacturers are very severe at the quality of product? Who knows the answer?

The trust and belief only be brought by honest behavior.

Honest behavior is;to keep promiseto be punctualto tell truthto not tell liesto not wangleto not palter to not quibbleto not tergiversate

Idea of;No excuse

No resignationPursuing

possibility,Perfection andCompleteness

Product Design

Production Engineering

Quality Control

Procurement control

Common Japanese sense

The relationship can be kept under the trust and belief.

Japanese considers the relationship between people is important.

ü Shintoü Bushidoü Confucianismü Buddhism


How Japanese start the changes?

Goal Definition

• On time delivery

• Highest quality• Lower cost

Collect wide range of

ideas

Define new rule & change the process

See the efficiency and

enhance or change the

process

Know the factü How we deliverü How is our

qualityü How is our costü What is wrong

Put the concrete idea of target

• If people donʼt make any excuse against the occurrence of defects, there easily will be many ideas of our wrong points and weakness

Accept any ideaü Collect from

various aspectsü Do not blame

ideasü Know the pointsü Build the logic

and verify

• If people pursue the perfection and completeness, there will be no limitation of ideas and no one should reject strange ideas.

New rulesü Everyone can

join the new rule discussion

ü Ask for ideas for rule enhancement

• People can be proactive against the rules what they defined.

• If the purpose of new rule is clear it is very easy to apply to actual activity and change the process.

Share the efficiencyü Discuss for

better efficiencyü Discuss issues

challenges in a new rules

• As people can be proactive against the new rules and process, the cyclic work of update of rules and enhancement of process will be quick.

KAIZEN Circulation

As every employees join this cyclic activity, there will be the atmosphere of improvement.

The atmosphere also affects engineers learning attitude and takes root of improvement & enhancement mind.

In Japan this activity is know as “KAIZEN” (QC circle activity).

“KAIZEN” means “make it better than before”. So every one can join the activity and it has no limitation. Any ideas and any objectives are OK as far as it brings KAIZEN.

Understand why Japanese products have high quality


How Japanese find the improvement points?

Seeking higher Quality tool or methodology

Finding weakness

There are two approaches

Responsible team find the

new technology for it

Everyone can find from the daily activity

Bring & implement the new technology

Discuss and take immediate action by each

team

Stay back and wait until it

suits to organization

Review and check the

efficiency within the team

Review and check and put it to the next step

by the responsible

team

Share & exchange the

idea and progress

between teams

Top down approach

Bottom up approach

Top down approach is effective as far as the improvement point is clear and the team is small enough.The responsible team assigned for quality improvement need to lead the entire activity and review the efficiency of activity.If the efficiency wonʼt meet the target level, the activity may be removed. The front line engineers will wait for the next direction.Even spending 3 years or 5 years there will be no “mood for quality improvement” among the front line engineers.

Bottom up approach is effective in any size of organization. Each individual can be the member of improvement. Any ideas anythoughts are welcome. It may be difficult to achieve the target level of quality only by one program, but the combination ofactivity will bring more efficiency of improvement. Possibility of failure of activity is very low. The “mood” for quality improvement will be radicated.

Those both “top down approach” and “bottom up approach” have the equivalent importance.

Understand why Japanese products have high quality


What kind of offshore supplier does Japanese OEM expect?It is obvious that Japanese OEMs expect offshore servicer who understand the idea of quality improvement, KAIZEN and relationship building.

So what we have to show them is;ü Enough skill level in a certain technology area with concrete example (Case study)ü High process management capability to deliver high quality deliverables (Internal activity of KAIZEN)ü How we have been improving our engineering capability on the cutting edge technology area

(Proactive Investment)ü Rich experience with Japanese manufacturers (True story of strengthening relationship with

Japanese customers)

And at the same time we should obtain their supplier evaluation process, otherwise we may present our capability to someone who have no interest on that topic.On the next slide, there you can see one example of supplier evaluation process chart. Even this is a sample, it may give you clear idea of the path to start business with Japanese manufacturer.


Process of supplier evaluation

Know about the supplier

1st supplier evaluation

2nd supplier evaluation

Pilot project(3rd evaluation)

Projectparticipation(4th evaluation)

Partner proposal

Information collection- Candidate

selection from company profile, location, current business status, etc.

Interviewing- Meet people &

collect examples of business cases, strong points, weak points, capabilities, experiences, quality assurance, employee training & education. Business investment and deployment. etc.

- Confirm the stories and case studies are realistic.

Fact confirmation- See the factory,

laboratory, development center.

- Meet local people, managers and have direct QA meeting especially about the current skills, expertise, training, education on technical aspects.

- See if the current process can produce high quality deliverables.

- See the management documents and managing rules and methods.

- Watch the team communication methods, disciples, rules of meeting, employees behaviors.

Candidate selection Possibility finding Evaluation Confirmation

Capability confirmation- Ask small projects

to evaluate the management and technical skills.

- Have a review meeting to give the conclusion.

Starting projects- RFQ for middle

size project- Watch the

proactiveness and customer dependency of the management

Further discussion- Discussion for

further involvement

- Discussion based on supplierʼs proposal.

Confidence building Partnership finding

Provide sufficient information and company data.- Company profile,

history, policy and philosophy

- Business development and deployment methodology

- Strong points, success story, secret of strength.

Provide sufficient case studies- Show the strength,

skills, capabilities, attractive pointswith actual case studies and facts.

- Give other customers evaluation against supplier.

- Give the current project profile and story of the engagement.

Present and introduce our actual activity. - Show how we are

executing projects, managing the project and producing the quality.

- Show every thing from training to management which are related to delivery.

Form a team & establish communication path- Show our

confidence in engaged area.

- Be proactive in all activities, specification definition, clarification of requirement, feasibility assurance, test case expansion and schedule & task management.

- Proactively discuss on project control.

- Show our plan, report the progress, ensure the quality, deliver on time and submit necessary documents without any insufficiency.

Form a large team & strong management and establish closer communication path- Show our

capability for a large project for both on development and management.

Propose a closer partnership- Show our

confidence with the benefit of customer.

What customer wants to do

What Supplier must do

L

P

Q

Procurement div.

Front Line div.

Quality Assurance div.

L

L

P

LP Q

L Q L Q

L

2016/10/13 Copyright2016YuichiMoriwaki 7

Thank You

Step by step…