Why did giant manufacturers in Japan fail to deploy ERP? I believe that three factors unique to Japan are involved in that.

They are Kaizen, Lifetime Employment, and Customer Focus, which are usually considered wonderful. I would like to get your opinions and feedback.

Solidworks comments as follows; Most large enterprises and Fortune 1000 companies have a corporate ERP system — such as SAP, JDE or Oracle — already in place for managing business operations, including sales orders. However, most corporate ERP systems are not integrated with the production floor, causing discrepancies between planned versus actual production, underutilized capacity, and higher manufacturing costs.

Our production scheduler Asprova has been installed at more than 3666 sites in 51 countries. I also know that integrating ERP with production floor is not easy.

Some say that the integration is made possible by speeding up the system, but that alone will not work.

All three failure cases are Japanese companies.

Characteristics of Japanese companies are Kaizen, Lifetime employment, Customer focus.

the Benefits of Kaizen and Lifetime Employment

The better the company, the more enthusiastic it is about kaizen. Kaizen is a continuous process that never ends. Employees continue to improve their own work, processes, and factories until they leave the company.

This is much more efficient than factories in other countries, where many employees change jobs.

Disadvantages of Kaizen and Lifetime Employment

Kubota has many innovations to shorten a workday by just one second. For example, they have improved jigs, arranged tools, and changed the layout of the work area.

Since these are unique innovations, they are difficult to standardize and systematize.

Kubota had a difficult time establishing a production control system. It was an individual system for each plant.

ERP is a fine tool for integrated management and control of multiple factories, purchasing, and logistics. However, factories and logistics centers that have many unique innovations cannot easily automate decisions and processes based on data and logic.

For example, a person who has been working for decades can quickly fit changes or problems.but he doesn't write them in doocument, can't write as conditional formula. He doesn't need them.

Merits of Customer Focus

In Japan, customers' requests are valued and deadlines are strictly adhered to.

Even in the busiest of situations, they will not refuse new orders, but will make them in three days. This is a great thing for customers.　　

When manufacturing companies in other countries make a production plan, they include a margin for change.

If a change is beyond the scope of the plan, the response is, "We can't do it," or "We'll deliver the product next month. In Japan, most of the time they accept even if the margin exceeds the plan.

I think this is the same as tourists highly evaluate Japanese excellent service as "Omotenashi". Tipping is not a custom in Japan.

Disadvantages of Customer Focus

For this reason, Japanese companies are trying to push express orders into today's night or tomorrow.

It is necessary to check and grasp the progress of orders and jobs in all processes to cut in the orders, and need to issue new work instructions in a hurry.

This is why Japanese factories are very busy on the shop floor. These cannot be covered by MRP-based production management systems.

They need a system that can closely monitor the progress and performance of orders and jobs/ operations.

So Asprova, which can change 1000s of jobs in seconds and generate a feasible schedule, has been introduced in Japan for a long time. Over 60% of major japanese manufacturers deployed Asprova.

I think excessive customer service can be considered a weakness of Japan. I don't think Western ERP vendors understand this.

People in Japanese factories think that IT guys don't have enough understanding of the shop floor. Just being familiar with SAP's manufacturing module will not work.

Conclusion

Japan's excellent customer-focused factories has not been a good fit for ERP. It's not that there's a problem with the ERP.

Introducing a system with reduced customization in a short period of time would reduce the strengths of Japanese manufacturing and would likely cause problems.

Appendix

Kubota's Kaizen and the history of factory system

Kaizen

The basic philosophy of Kubota's Monozukuri is to "aim for manufacturing that impresses customers by providing products and services that exceed their expectations at a speed that exceeds their expectations. We thoroughly eliminate wasteful operations in all processes from raw material procurement to production management, distribution, and sales.

Kaizen Example

In the assembly line of the engine manufacturing process, the line is built based on four concepts: (1) never turn around, (2) never walk, (3) hand-assemble (assemble at hand), and (4) create a system that allows the same work to be performed by anyone. (They say this process is the fruit of 100 years of wisdom.)

In the transmission picking process, accuracy is required because each model has different parts. The system used here is called "lamp picking. Under the box containing each part is a lamp and a digital display window, and from the box with the lamp, the indicated number of parts is taken. In the past, they used to just collect the parts, but now they assemble some of the parts on the spot while picking, because assembling the parts after collecting them means touching the parts twice. Also, the work is done while riding in the AGV.

This is because they used to work while walking, but they thought that more walking was the biggest waste and that how to work without getting tired would lead to a good job.

History of Kubota's Plant Systems

Kubota's four plants in Japan had individual systems.

They developed and began using a production management system and a manufacturing system in 2003, which standardized functions such as production planning, BOM management for manufacturing, and calculation of the number of parts required.

This manufacturing system manages work instructions and results and works in conjunction with the production control system.

Around 2009, when Kubota considered systemization of its Thai plant, it considered applying the Japanese plant's system or SAP production module (SAP accounting had already been implemented), but

They decided to creat a new standard system for their overseas plants.

The reason they did not choose SAP manufacturing was that the database structure of Kubota's BOM was unique, and they determined that it would be difficult for the package to support it.

Around 2015, Kubota first introduced the SAP manufacturing module at its French plant. The head said ' The introduction of SAP was a shift in manufacturing from the Japanese style of "visual management" to the Western style of "data management on a system'.

I think this is a statement straight out of a catalog advertisement. Were they able to make use of the experience in systemizing the Thai factory?