The assembly tricks that give Japan Inc. an edge

TOYOTA CITY — A whir of belts, a clatter of ratchets, a hiss of compressors and a rumble of rollers. The cacophony ricochets through the cavernous Global Production Center at Toyota's sprawling Motomachi plant here in the Japanese automaker's hometown.

Hundreds of excited men and women in shop floor jumpsuits jockey for a peek at the main attraction. But it's not Toyota's latest, greatest prototype or a sleek new Lexus.

Instead, the big draw is a warehouse worth of wonderful and sometimes way-out inventions devised with one goal in mind: Streamline the factories of the vast Toyota Motor Group, a corporate empire already boasting what is arguably the world's leanest manufacturing system.

The devices resemble Rube Goldberg machines. They rely on gravity, levers, pulleys, even rubber bands or old plastic bottles to get the job done, in sometimes comically clever ways. But far from being pointless cartoon contraptions, Toyota's machines often shave substantial cost or time from production, or they lighten the workload or improve safety.

In short, they are secret weapons that keep Toyota lean, mean and, increasingly, green.

"This is most important because it changes people's mindset," said Takeshi Tsuchiya, group manager for plant maintenance in Japan. "It focuses us on continuous improvement."

President Akio Toyoda is cracking down on cost like never before in what he calls a "life or death" struggle to ensure the company's future. In addition to cutting costs and improving efficiency, karakuri save energy, a key goal of Toyota's longer-term ambition to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from manufacturing by 2050.

Crucially, they also help the automaker squeeze additional output from plants humming at top capacity, without costly investments in new lines, employees or equipment.

"Every little bit helps," said Norm Bafunno, senior vice president for powertrain manufacturing and engineering at Toyota Motor North America, who was trolling for ideas at the karakuri expo. "The competition is very strong, and our very survival depends on getting better every day."

For the factory denizens who safeguard the vaunted Toyota Production System, karakuri are a key element of kaizen, the Japanese tenet of continuous improvement that has become a global buzzword among management consultants.

"Day after day, we make just small improvements," said Hiroyoshi Ninoyu, Toyota Motor Corp.'s managing officer for global production planning. "But we keep going. That's why we say continuous improvement and not just improvement. Without it being continuous, it's all over."

The cunning contraptions are so important to Toyota, the company flies in hundreds of workers from around the world every year to take classes on how to devise their own gadgets at factories back home. The first lesson begins with studying how antique windup toys work.

Toyota is hardly alone in its commitment to karakuri. Across Japan, companies say the little shortcuts — and the thinking behind them — are the key to successful kaizen.

For 22 years, the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance has hosted an annual karakuri contest, handing out prizes across a swath of industries, from petrochemicals to metal-making. But the automakers and their suppliers rule the roost when it comes to creative karakuri.

Along the trim line of Mazda Motor Corp.'s assembly plant in Hiroshima, for instance, plastic tea and pop bottles filled with old bolts bob up and down alongside the conveyor. They act as jury-rigged counterweights that pull equipment back in place after use. By shaving just a few seconds on each car built, Mazda figures it saves ¥720,000 ($6,400) a year. That is not a lot in itself, but the effect is multiplied across dozens of different karakuri implemented throughout the company.

"Western automakers are more in favor of computers and electronics because it makes them look better, even though they don't always work better," said Christoph Roser, a professor of production management at Germany's Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences and author of the blog AllAboutLean.com. "Karakuri, by definition, has no computers, so it's the exact opposite. It's extremely simple, but it works. It's well-entrenched throughout Japanese industry."

Karakuri can look gimmicky but deliver a winning edge because they focus on unsung secrets of world-class manufacturing. The best ones alleviate overwork, waste or uneven workflow while improving safety, quality, productivity or maintenance. They are low-cost and consume little power.

While the concept is well-known in Japan, Japanese carmakers find it harder to establish the tradition overseas. That limits the benefits because Japan's automakers aren't building new factories at home. More and more of their global production base is in other countries.

"The flip side of the karakuri issue is whether local efforts are really central in a global industry," said Michael Smitka, a professor of economics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

"Factories in Japan should be able to trot out examples of karakuri developed at their plants in the U.S., in China and so on," he said. "If they can't, they're not really in the ballgame."

Toyota, for one, is trying to do just that. Its latest Karakuri Exhibition, in June, featured 127 devices from Japan and around the world. Exhibit No. 102, called Return to Sender, showed how the pros do it.

Not long ago, frustrated workers building the Tundra pickup at Toyota's assembly plant in San Antonio had a back-breaking problem. Every time a Tundra came through their station, it would pull a cart of parts and tools with it. The problem was, after the vehicle moved to the next process, workers had to wrestle the 72-pound cart back to the starting point 25 feet up the line.

And they had to do that no fewer than 1,040 times a day.

Surely, there's a better way, thought John Alteneder, assistant manager for kaizen at the factory. The fix was as simple as it was ingenious.

Alteneder's team attached a spring- loaded line to the cart. It spools out as the cart and vehicle move down the line together. When the cart gets to the end of the process, it trips a switch, and the coil reels the cart back like a retractable keychain.

The extra cost was peanuts, but the savings in time and wear and tear were substantial.

"Now, if you tried to take it away, the team members would go crazy," Alteneder said.

Toyota's U.S. operations are new karakuri converts. Starting about five years ago, Toyota formed kaizen teams of two to eight people versed in karakuri at every U.S. plant, Toyota Motor North America's Bafunno said.

But in Japan, the tradition is as old as Toyota itself.

Employees here have mastered wringing cost and time from their work.

Kenta Kondo, a 24-year-old technician, said he has dreamed up 20 shortcuts in his five years at Toyota, netting bonuses of up to $800 for the good ones. His latest: a way to streamline testing for nitrogen oxide in diesel emissions during vehicle development.

The old way involved removing the exhaust pipe to rework it with sensors in a four-hour ordeal that cost up to $600 per test. His breakthrough: a jig that allows the sensor to be inserted directly into any pipe, eliminating the removal cost and cutting test time to 10 seconds.

Kondo spent about 20 hours devising the jig after his shift, and Toyota paid for the overtime.

"I just wanted to make my work easier," Kondo said.

Some workers spend months birthing ideas. And Toyota encourages it, even if the result delivers little cost savings, said Ninoyu, the global production planning officer. It makes employees more vested in their work.

"This is about human resource development," he said. "Instead of paying a supplier, we can supply it ourselves, make it ourselves and fix it for ourselves when it is broken."

Safeguarding hands-on basics is fundamental to the Toyota Way.

In fact, there is an entire line at Toyota's Kamigo engine plant where every process is still done by hand, relying heavily on karakuri. Called the Super Skill Line, it's populated almost exclusively by workers older than 60. It functions as a test bed of all manner of karakuri. The idea: If karakuri can simplify work for someone over 60, they can probably work for everyone.

The line also is a reservoir of old-school know-how in the age of automation. Indeed, Toyota cherishes manual labor as the fundamental building block of all manufacturing.

"If you automate everything, it requires capital investment," said Masayuki Fukai, deputy general manager of the Kamigo plant, where 18 people hand-build 22 engines a day. "Manual work is sometimes more effective. If you can do it first by hand, that's the best starting point."

At Toyota, the latest karakuri craze is gadgets that cut carbon dioxide. That is part of the Toyota Environmental Challenge to eliminate carbon emissions from manufacturing by 2050. Some energy savings have come from unusual sources.

Yuki Kashiwagi, 27, installs car audio systems by fastening a tiny bolt in a tiny recess. It's dainty work often interrupted when a bolt gets fumbled. So Kashiwagi spent three months inventing a needle-nosed ratchet that can easily reach into the narrow slot where his fingers can't.

Toyota believes the invention can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 0.6 ton a year. Why?

Because, it says, workers lose about five hours a month looking for dropped bolts, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of overtime. And overtime means keeping the lights on longer.

"It's important to realize, if you don't work overtime, it saves time and power," said Tsuchiya, the plant maintenance group manager.

At Mazda, karakuri have even more immediate effect: They helped the second-tier automaker ramp up production of hot-selling crossovers on a shoestring budget.

Take, for example, the body-welding line at Mazda's factory complex in Hiroshima.

For the last several years, its workers were getting slammed with surging demand for the CX-5 crossover — the brand's best-selling nameplate — and a long-wheelbase variant sold in Japan as the CX-8. Tightfisted plant managers needed more product, stat. But they had to cap costs.

So, every three months, line operators reviewed their setup for ways to eke out gains.

Among their kaizen: Reducing the weight of the welding gun from 33 pounds to 4 so workers are less fatigued and less prone to make mistakes. Workers also added blue plastic stoppers to welding points to help them more quickly and easily position their guns.

Through tweaks such as these, workers boosted annual output by 114,000 vehicles from 2012 to 2017. In 2015, it took the line 4.5 minutes to weld a vehicle. Now, it takes just 3.06 minutes.

Across the company, Mazda boosted output in Japan to 971,455 vehicles last year from 813,302 in 2011, without adding lines.

"We get very big impact with very small investment," said Takamasa Fujii, a trim line manager.

Mazda wants to boost output enough to support annual sales increases of 50,000 vehicles through its fiscal year ending in March 2022. That would enable Mazda to supply global sales of 1.8 million vehicles by then, up from a projected 1.62 million this year. Only in 2021 will Mazda finally add fresh capacity — an assembly plant it is jointly building with Toyota in Alabama.

Mazda's Hiroaki Yamamoto, a "master trainer" who claims to have invented more karakuri than he can count during his 27 years at the company, has a special affinity for gizmos powered by gravity instead of electricity — such as the bobbing plastic tea bottles.

"You can adjust the speed by adding bottles or moving the pulleys up and down. That makes me very happy," Yamamoto said. But the real value, he stresses, runs much deeper.

"The best karakuri is a device that actually works on the shop floor," he said. "We put these into actual operation to help with production. We don't just do karakuri for show."