Knowledge works

the long version

For the past twenty-five years, Japanese industrial productivity has been growing more rapidly than productivity in the U.S. By presenting a close-up look at a factory in Japan that is typical of what the author calls "Knowledge Works," this book provides insight into Japanese success in manufacturing. W. Mark Fruin draws on five year's study of Toshiba and other leading Japanese industrials, and more than a year's participative field work at Yanagicho Works of the Toshiba Corporation, in Kawasaki City, where he wore the Toshiba uniform, worked on the line, studied the development of the SuperSmart card, and sat in the Manufacturing Engineering and Human Resources Training Departments. Like so many Japanese factories, Yanagicho Works is highly productive, efficient, and flexible, and staffed by workers who constantly strive to improve the way they work and the quality of the products they produce. The key to this success, Fruin explains, is the continuous creation and application of knowledge throughout the whole factory complex, from the assembly workers to top management, a process facilitated from the start by Japanese culture and history.