Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126073
2HIpey to the Source Suzuka works: If Henry Ford had ' een Japanese b By Lane Cam pbell a n t. to know the secret of Honda's success? It was one of the first things we were told upon entering Honda's Suzuka factory complex. :'At Suzuka, " our hosts said. "eigh t thousand workers generate I. I billion do llars wor th of annual sales turnover." Want that again? Each year, 8 .000 Japanese workers in th is place produce enough vehicles to sell for over a billion dollars at retail. Each . person, according to simple arithmetic. produces $137 ,500 worth of work . give or take a measly grand. That means if you pa id everybody $20 .000 . that Suzuka work er 's productivity is enough to carry six other people on his back. He is doing for motorcycles what the American farmer does for food. This kind of productiviry represents great economic power. ' Ch eap labor ? It's a myth. Japan has one of the highest inflation rates in th e industrialized world. That means salaries. materials. real estate. W 18 everything is on an escalator. The onl y thing that keeps the Japanese island nation from strangling itself to death like the British island nation is that near-m agic figure one man p roducing $137 ,500 worth of goods . This kind of productivity is both the how and the why of the Suzuka works' existence. Begun purely as a motorcycle p roduction facility, it was virtually doubled in size around 1971 with the addition of one giant integrated assembly bu ilding which produces Honda cars and assembles the large CB-series Fours. In twe "older" building. piece parts are turned out to support both car and bike production; and th e two mass selling ~Occ . models (the venerable Super Cub and the newer Road Pal) are turned out, each on its own line. at a rat e; of one every eight seconds. One every eight seconds. You probably don 't visualize what that means. It m eans ea ch man's job on the line is keyed to an eight-second cycle time . Detroit assembly workers get in a ' ras ty, fighting mood over anything shorter than 20 seconds. They say it's dehumanizing. boring, man- killing .(pick your adjective). Yet here we are, watching eight-second-cycle repetitive work , seeing hands moving rhythmically, no rush, no strain showing 'o n faces , no dead look in the eyes, just a relaxed easy workpace. Before coming to Cycle News, my job, .as an industrial engineer, was to observe factory workers , clipboard and stopwatch in hand, analyzing every move . judging whether th e men were pushing themselves or sandbagging. These Japanese workers were maintaining a safe. steady 85% workpace - the kind that doesn't kill and doesn't tire. It's the kind of pace an engineer would like to see when there's no union on one hand pushing for slower pace and no tight- ass management on the other side pushing for speed. It's the kind of workpace that forces a man to concentrate, yet allows him enough slack to scratch an itch. Watching the work from the mezzanine catwalk above, as our hosts gently hustled us along, was profoundly moving. First off, there was no doubt these guys were good . They knew their moves , performing them easily as they shuffled alongside the powered conveyor line to follow the unit that they were working on , some trading off with another worker and doing every other unit , some doing each un it , quickly shifting back to the beginning po int to pick up the next unit, at the right spot. Picking parts, placing parts, placing nut/washer groups , handing off to the next man to torque down a constant chain of movement. It ' bespeaks . training. teamwork, concentration , and good attitude, a kind of workplace ballet. Second , th e workplace itself is right. The entire line is spotless, well-lit and airy. The atmospher e is clean , the temperature right , th e air onl y slightly tinged with th e scen t of hot oil, machinery , and cutting fluid that wafts from other parts of th e plant. The men are dressed like labworkers '- spotless white coveralls and Honda factory caps. The tool s are new, clean , airpowered, and muffled . You rea ch for an airdriver a nd it's hanginl}wher e you reached ; release it and it returns . ready for the next move . Fully threequaners of Am erica 's assembly workers can only -dream of working in such a pla ce. . Fin ally (and thi s is where that high I productivity pays off) lots of people put lots of hours int o th e d esign of eac h work sta tio n and each sequence of moves. That $137 ,000 per man is