 Interview
Toyota Industries Corporation,
which was searching for possibilities
to deploy their superlative manufacturing
technologies in the electronics field.
Sony, which had established
the component technologies for low-temperature
polycrystalline silicon TFT LCDs
and wanted to mass produce TFT LCDs
using those technologies.
The respective “cultures of innovative
manufacturing” developed by these companies
were extremely individual and contrasting.
But for that reason, the impact of
combining these cultures was that much larger.
Increasing the Success Rate of Efforts
ST Liquid Crystal Display Corp.
President
Koshi Iwata
(Previously Executive Vice President
of Toyota Industries Corporation) |
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As Different as Oil and Water
When we at Toyota Industries Corporation*1
first looked into forming a joint venture with
Sony, we read in the reports prepared by
several market research companies that the
two companies were as different as oil and
water. The corporate cultures were so different
that it was inconceivable that a joint effort would work out. They expected the
joint venture to last three years at most.
It is certainly true that the Toyota “DNA”
and the Sony “DNA” are strongly contrasting.
For example, at Sony, there is the
tendency to value the fact of taking on a challenge itself more than reflection on the failure
if an attempt at a challenging project
failed. In contrast, at Toyota, the first step
after a failure is reflection and soul-searching,
bringing the issues to light, and preventing
the same failure from ever happening
again.
This is not a matter of one approach being
good and the other bad. Both Toyota and
Sony have survived and prospered in their
corresponding industries by standing firm
with their own DNA. There’s nothing wrong
with the DNA being different. My view is
that applying Toyota’s mass production
DNA*2 to Sony’s spirit of challenge should
increase the success rate of efforts.
Comparing the Joint Venture to a Person
While I often use this comparison, if we look
at this joint venture as a person, Sony’s design
know-how related to low-temperature
polycrystalline silicon TFT LCD production
is like the head. Toyota, which mainly supports
the conversion of this technology to
mass production is the body. If the body (especially
the legs and torso) is trained, that
will stimulate the head, and if the head is
stimulated, it’s design capabilities will be
increased. On the other hand, if the head issues
a command to respond to a challenge
and that command is transmitted to the body,
the body moves to respond to those severe commands,
and the iteration of that can train the
body. Through this process, the body becomes
stronger and its physical capabilities increase.
That is, this mutual stimulation and training
allows the venture to grow like a person.
Inversely, if a joint venture consists of two
companies in which company A forms the
right half of both the body and brain, and
company B forms the left half of the body
and brain, then the left and right will struggle
with each other. There have been several actual
examples of joint ventures with exactly
this problem. STLCD isn't like that: it stands
as a single, independent, well-formed person.
Another way of looking at it is that by combining
the “creativity” of Sony with the “productivity”
of Toyota, we can achieve a high
level of “creative productivity”.
Responding even more Speedily to
Customer Needs
In 2000, Sony sent out feelers about enhancing
the joint venture’s manufacturing facilities.
However, we asked for a bit more time
to think about it. This was because we thought
that we should first perfect our mass production
quality and technologies further and then
apply the results of those efforts at the next
stage. At the time, the most difficult problem
was increasing yields. While this is a project
in which everyone is involved, from top management
to the equipment operators on the
factory floor, the project is still underway. In
particular, this project consisted of accumulating
the results of these step-by-step efforts
one at a time. These step-by-step efforts start
with explicating the critical defects in important
products, and include thorough analysis
of the cause of those defects and analysis of the mechanisms involved, assuring adequate
production capacity in processes that form
bottlenecks, Acquisition by making visible*3
the quality information for the key processes
and assuring thorough local management
throughout the manufacturing line. This takes
place not only at Toyota’s daily “Asa-ichi”,
“Hiru-ichi”, and “Yu-ichi” reports, but
weekly management meeting reports as well.
In this manner, the points that need improvement
in the processes and equipment become
clear during the process of increasing yields
to the target level. Based on these points and
by adding improvement on top of improvement,
we have made powerful advances by
matching our facilities improvement activities
that increase the completeness/perfection
of our facilities with our yield improvement
activities. At the start, our facilities were inadequately
developed for mass production of
this new low-temperature polycrystalline silicon
TFT LCD technology. At STLCD, we
determined the issues with the equipment and
were aggressive about making proposals to
the equipment manufacturers. We set up “equipment manufacturer leadership advisory
conferences” with the manufacturers of
problematic equipment and I, along with
executive vice president Ogura and the line managers in charge, would visit the presidents
of the equipment manufacturers and request
improvements backed up with failure history
diagrams.
As a result of these improvements, yields finally
exceeded the planned levels. It was only
at this point that we resolved to undertake
investment to expand the manufacturing facilities.
We focused on the points of maximizing
production capacity and moving to
100% in-house manufacture of the color filters
and committed to construction of a second
manufacturing building. At that time,
there was also a proposal to switch to
outsourced manufacture of the color filters as
a hedge against the risk of supply problems
and to reduce the amount of investment required.
However, when seen from the perspective
of the Toyota ideal of innovative
manufacturing of quality products, since the
TFT substrate and the color filter substrate
together make up a single product, we wanted
to manufacture them together in a single system.
By doing that, we would be able to assure
proper product quality and reduce the
production lead time. This also allows us to
design our own color filters and respond
quickly to changing customer needs.
Sharing is the Key for both Innovative
Manufacturing and the Corporation
What does it mean to not force fit the partners
together, but rather to allow a true fusion of
their DNA? In the context of our current
efforts, it means that people from Toyota and
people from Sony can work together naturally,
performing the work that needs to be
done with mutual understanding and
acceptance. If there is even the slightest feeling
of “why is this being done this way?”
then we have not achieved true fusion.
For example, at STLCD, we take “Acquisition
by making visible*3 ” very seriously. The
point of this is to make abnormalities, problems,
and progress of the solution to those
issues clearly visible. Furthermore, this
“visibility” is shared with other groups so that
it can be useful in preventing reoccurrence
of the problem or in other improvements*4 .
To support this, we hold “Kaizen-ichi*3 ”
untiringly, morning, noon, and evening. At
first, people from Sony were really surprised.
However, they now participate as a matter of
course.
It will soon be six years since we began mass
production, and as a result of thoroughgoing
efforts across all management to achieve this
“visual control”, we have come to mutually
respect each other’s DNA and have the
satisfaction of seeing progress in the fusion
of the corporate DNA. |
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*1 Toyota Industries Corporation
Toyota Industries Corporation was
founded by Sakichi Toyoda in 1926 to
manufacture the automatic loom works
he invented. The automobile division set
up within that company in 1933 for automobile
manufacture later became
Toyota Motor Corporation. The company
has expanded its businesses to include
automobiles, automotive parts such as
engines and car air conditioning compressor,
industrial vehicles, and textile
machinery.
*2 Toyota Production System
An approach that aims at improved productivity
and reduced inventory by a “thorough
elimination of Muda (Non-value added)”.
This is not simply a fixed procedure or particular
technology, but rather is Toyota’s
value system and process for intellectual
creativity.
*3 The Daily "Kaizen-ichi"
and "Acquisition by Making Visible"
For the rejects, defects, and problems that
occur while performing daily manufacturing
activities, on the day that the problem
occurs, everyone concerned meets at “Kaizen-ichi (improvement meeting)”,
“Asa-ichi (morning meeting)”, “Hiru-ichi
(noon meeting)”, or “Yu-ichi (evening
meeting)” to determine the cause of the
problem and create an action plan. Also,
the result is written up on a poster and
posted so that it can be shared. This allows
progress of the solution, the “braking”
applied by the reoccurrence prevention,
and “Yoko-ten (horizontal deployment)” of solutions to be visible and to be
carried out speedily and properly.
Since people often have the mistaken
idea that the final purpose is to make the
problems visible, at STLCD, we have
adopted the term “Acquisition by making
visible” to refer to efforts to explicate “what
is it that we have acquired by making what
visible for what purpose.”
*4 Thorough "Yoko-ten (Horizontal Deployment)" and Preventing
Problems in Advance
At STLCD, we also make thorough-going
efforts at “Yoko-ten (horizontal deployment)”
of shared issues to take advantage
of similar cases. What this
means is that we make a thorough-going
study of whether or not the workarounds,
preventive measures, developed for a
single problem can be applied to similar
products, technologies, equipment, or
processes, and in areas where the solution
applies, we use the same solution to
prevent in advance similar problems from
occurring. |
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Vol.39
