Question: Explain the main components of lean production in relation to Nissan UK.

background information provided about Nissan

Flow production

Nissan's Sunderland plant is technically highly advanced. It uses sophisticated robotics and computer integrated manufacturing techniques to produce a carefully monitored production process that reduces errors to an absolute minimum.

Automated machines can only do so much however; the human element remains vital. Organising an effective flow of production at Nissan has involved developing a way of doing things and an attitude towards work based on giving responsibility to employees at every step. This approach raises employees' morale, and reduces absenteeism, which could severely impact on continuous flow production.

Nissan expects and requires its employees to become multi-skilled decision makers. Most employees also want that for themselves. Reaching that goal involves:

• Training employees to develop their skills.
• Encouraging them to make decisions.
• Organising employees into participative teams.
• Developing open-channel, multi-directional communication systems.
• Placing quality at the heart of flow production.
• Flexible working practices.
• Providing the employee variety within his/her role.
• The open communication policy includes daily face to face meetings between management and employees, a company council, employee surveys, and employees having ready access to the company's intranet system.
• The emphasis placed on 'going for quality' means that each employee is responsible both for their own work and the standards of their co-workers. By ensuring management recognises that individuals have this control results in everyone taking the culture on board. 'Going for

quality' emphasises 'building good quality in' rather than 'inspecting poor quality out'. Each employee controls quality by checking that the previous job has been done properly.

Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a key feature of Nissan's way of working. TQM involves making customer satisfaction top priority. Given this goal, everything the organisation and its people do is focused on creating high quality. To achieve this, Nissan has to understand customer requirements, consider the processes involved in providing quality, not just the end result, prioritise and standardise tasks to deliver quality, and educate all employees to work in this way.

In practical terms TQM involves:

• Identifying customers and their requirements.
• Establishing and using objectives (targets) for all areas of activity.
• Basing decisions on researched hard facts rather than on hunches.
• Identifying and eliminating the root causes of problems.
• Educating and training employees.
• TQM is an ongoing process; a way of thinking and doing that requires an 'improvement culture' in which everyone looks for ways of doing better. Building this culture involves making everyone feel their contributions are valued and helping them to develop their capabilities.
• A cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act becomes part of every employee's thinking, because it represents Nissan's way of working.

Just-in-time technology

With a just-in-time approach, specific vehicles and their components are produced just-in- time to meet demand. Sub-assemblies move into the final assembly plant just as final assemblers are ready to work on them, components arrive just-in-time to be installed, and so on. In this way, the amount of cash tied up in stock and in work-in-progress is kept to a minimum, as is the amount of space devoted to costly warehousing rather than to revenue- generating production. Nissan's just-in-time process depends not on human frailty, but on machine precision.

Every vehicle is monitored automatically throughout each stage of production. A transponder attached to the chassis leg contains all of a vehicle's production data e.g. its required colour, specification and trim. This triggers sensors at various points along the production line thus updating the records.

When, for example, the transponder sends a message to the production system at a supplying company to produce a seat in a particular colour and trim, this triggers the relevant response and a seat to the required specification is produced. Further along the production line the specifically produced seat arrives to meet the vehicle to which it belongs-just-in-time.

The importance of training

It is vital to train people to work in such a hi-tech industry with such sophisticated quality systems. Nissan UK's training department conducts a training needs analysis to assess individual employees' needs and to organise training programmes.

The department concentrates on five main areas:

1. 1)Technical development-e.g. teaching skills relating to robotics and electrics, plus the
2. required knowledge such as wiring rules/regulations etc.
3. 2)People development-identifying employee needs and ambitions, and providing
4. courses to help personal development such as team building and communication
5. skills.
6. 3)Understanding processes-workshops covering safety, production operations etc.
7. 4)Computer skills and graduate training-from basic to highly technical skills.
8. 5)Trainee development-courses for graduate trainees ranging from accountancy to
9. team building.

Kaizen

Nissan is famously associated with 'Kaizen' or continuous quality improvement. Nissan states,"We will not be restricted by the existing way of doing things. We will continuously seek improvements in all our actions".

Kaizen can be applied everywhere, any time, any place. It can involve the smallest change in everyday working practice as well as a major change in production technology. Typically, these improvements are initiated by teams of employees sitting down together and sharing ideas for improvements. Small steady changes are maintained to make sure that they actually work. No improvement is too small. Everyone at Nissan is responsible for thinking about the current way of doing a job and finding a better way of doing things.

Kaizen improvements can save money, time, materials and labour effort, as well as improving quality, safety, job satisfaction, and productivity.

Kaizen permeates the Nissan UK's suggestion scheme, which offers not financial or individual rewards, but items that benefits the whole team such as a microwave for the staff kitchen or a pool table for the canteen.