the darker side of lean

The Darker Side of Lean:An Insider’s Perspective on the Realities of the Toyota Production SystemDarius Mehri*

Executive OverviewThe Toyota Production System (TPS) has been lauded as the pinnacle of flexible, just-in-time manufacturingand design and the founder of “lean work” systems, which claim to improve product quality and employeeproductivity. American automobile manufacturers readily adopted the “Toyota Way” and many of the man-agement practices in service industries, such as Total Quality Management (TQM) are biased on its fundamentalprinciples. The author of this paper, Darius Mehri, is an American-born computer simulation engineer whoworked in a Toyota group company for three years, observing this system firsthand and conducting his ownqualitative research on what he considers the true impact of lean work: the human cost. As a participant observerwho was inculcated in Japanese social and workplace culture, Mehri takes an examination of TPS well beyondwhat many studies American and European scholars have been able to go. His assessment is guided by adistinction which is fundamental to understanding Japanese culture and business: tatemae (what you are supposedto feel or do) and honne (what you actually feel or do). Mehri believes that international enthusiasm for theToyota Production System results from western observers’ failure to discern the honne within the tatemae. He liftsthe curtain of formality and messages from management at Toyota—the tatemae—that obscures the realities—the honne—of the Toyota Way: limited potential for creativity and innovation, narrow professional skills,worker isolation and harassment, dangerous conditions on the production line, accident cover-ups, excessiveovertime, and poor quality of life for workers.

Introduction

Many Westerners find it perplexing that Japan,a country with so few natural resources,should produce such a plentiful amount of

high quality goods. The American fascination, inparticular, with the success of Japanese manufac-turing has led to a multitude of studies on bestpractices and adoption of those practices in theUnited States. What is it that has made Toyota socompetitive? How does their management stylepromote innovation? Many attribute the Japanesemanufacturing success to a unique organizationalstructure called the Toyota Production System(TPS) or “lean work,” which also claims to im-prove quality and productivity while respectingworkers’ rights.

As far as the American assembly line was con-cerned, TPS was the answer that the manufacturingsector had been seeking to revitalize lagging indus-tries. By the early 1990s, the Toyota ProductionSystem had already proliferated throughout theUnited States, particularly in the manufacturingheartland of the Midwest. A 1992 study of organi-zations with 50 or more employees found that nearly80 percent had adopted practices associated withTPS (Osterman, 1994). A separate study conductedamong organizations of all sizes in 1993 reports thatover 40 percent had some experience with adoptingTPS practices (Brenner, Fairris and Russer 2002).

TPS had even reached beyond the manufacturingsector to include service industries. As John Pricewrites, “Lean production has inspired a resurgentquality movement in North America that has spreadfrom the factory to the warehouse and even intohealth care and educational facilities. Often appear-

Based on Notes from Toyota-Land: An American Engineer in Japan, byDarius Mehri. An ILR Press book published by Cornell University Press.Copyright © 2005 by Cornell University.

* Darius Mehri will be pursuing a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall of 2006. Contact:[email protected]

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ing under the labels Total Quality Management(TQM) or Continuous Quality Improvement(CQI), the quality movement is based largely on themodel of lean production” (Price 1997).

American industry and higher education hasaccepted, with little question, the wisdom of TPSand the Japanese way of managing. Much of theliterature purports that the Toyota ProductionSystem manages to achieve maximum productionand quality while it maintains a harmonious andhumane workplace. Popular literature by econo-mists and business writers has lauded the Toyotasuccess story and touted what others can learnfrom it. Praise is given to “mechanisms for totalquality control, plant layout and design for quickchanges and retooling” (Besser 1996). And de-spite economic troubles, Japan remains an eco-nomic powerhouse and its production system con-tinues to be studied and admired.

From April 1996 through June 1999, I livedand worked in Japan as a computer simulationengineer at Nizumi (pseudonym for the company),an automobile company in the Toyota kereitsu.Afforded a perspective that few American schol-ars were able to enjoy, I was able not only to raisea number of questions about the ascendancy ofTPS but also experience first-hand the inaccura-cies inherent in American accounts of its ad-vantages. My vantage point was unusual. Manyobservers have written books about new manage-ment methods in the office, in the Japanese fac-tory, and in the so-called transplants (Japanesefactories located in the United States), but untilnow, no American engineer has described theJapanese white-collar experience.

Every night, alone in my tiny company apart-ment, I recorded the day’s events. What began as theusual expatriate journal became something morecomplex when the Japanese economy, in troublesince 1990, took a drastic downturn in 1997. Then Isaw Japan’s management system—highly touted andimitated in the United States and elsewhere—placed under desperate stress. My entries recordedgroup dynamics, health and safety issues, genderrelations, and company restructuring. I came to viewthe lauded TPS system with a certain level of skep-ticism; with first-hand knowledge and first-personaccounts of the impact the system has on worker

safety, stress, creativity and innovation, overtime,and low morale, I came to question the assumedvalue of its rigors. TPS had achieved high produc-tivity, yes. Toyota maintains a powerful global mar-ket share, yes. Their product development process isrelentless at achieving continual improvement, cer-tainly. But at what price?

I was able to experience the 1997 recession andthe company’s response to it from several perspec-tives. I worked with Japanese engineers on prod-uct design teams, and I was fortunate to be in-cluded in their parties and other social occasions.But as a foreign worker, I also had many friendsamong foreigners on the assembly line. I learnedfrom them about the hazards of lean production inthe factory, particularly as line speeds increasedduring the economic downturn. I also learned howmanagement coped with the economic emergencyby using foreign workers and by outsourcingwithin the Toyota keiretsu or conglomerate. Myjournal soon became a record of the company’sculture and its managerial adaptations during theeconomic downturn.

NutsandBolts: Methodology

T his article, and the book from which it wasadapted (Mehri 2005) is based on my years as acovert participant-observer at Nizumi. Nizumi is

an upper-level Toyota group company. It employsover 7,000 workers, maintains more than five officesand factories throughout Japan, and its 2002 saleswere over $5 billion. It also maintains a number ofsales offices and factories in foreign countries. Ni-zumi is an original manufacturer of products forJapanese and foreign markets and has its own distri-bution network. The company also supplies parts forToyota Motors, and, like most companies within theToyota industrial pyramid (the keiretsu), it relies onconnections with Toyota to maintain and expand itsmarket share. Although Nizumi is an independentcompany, it has been an official Toyota keiretsuaffiliate for several years, and as a result has adoptedthe Toyota style of management. Toyota consideredthe plant so thoroughly steeped in “lean work” thatit sent Americans from its transplants to Nizumi fortraining.

Nizumi workers have been thoroughly immersedin the various practices of the Toyota Production

22 MayAcademy of Management Perspectives

System (TPS), such as just-in-time and pull manu-facturing. To maintain control over its companiesand to ensure implementation of the TPS, Toyotamanages the daily activities of Nizumi through Ni-zumi’s top managers, president, and board of direc-tors, many of whom come directly from Toyota. Thecomplexities of this total system are not evident atfirst, but my three years working as a contractor atNizumi have equipped me to provide an insider’slook at both the TPS system and how it reveals itstrue nature over time. While descriptions of peopleand processes are drawn from my journal and frominterviews, I have changed names and certain non-essential details to respect the privacy of my formercolleagues and the proprietary nature of my engi-neering work for Nizumi.

In addition to the direct observation I recorded inmy journal, I also conducted over 75 interviews withemployees, politicians, lawyers, labor scholars, andmembers of the community. The interviews rangedin duration from ten minutes to two hours. Aboutthree-quarters of those interviewed were Nizumiworkers. I interviewed temporary laborers, contractemployees, and mid to high-level managers. I inter-viewed engineers and union leaders and workers onthe line. Some 20 percent of the workers I inter-viewed were foreign, temporary workers, while therest were permanent Japanese workers. I conductedapproximately two-thirds of the interviews on com-pany grounds. These were informal talks. The re-maining third were held outside the company andwere more formally structured.

Kicking theTires:Literatureon Japan’sManagementModel

By the mid 1980s, when the Japanese economywas growing at a steady clip and its worksystem was relatively unknown, books on the

Japanese economy and workplace were becomingmore popular. The most notable books on thesubject include James Abbeglen’s The JapaneseFactory: Aspects of its Social Organization (1958),Robert Cole’s Japanese Blue Collar (1971) andWork, Mobility and Participation (1979), RonaldDore’s British Factory, Japanese Factory (1973),Thomas Rohlen’s For Harmony and Strength(1974), and Rodney Clark’s The Japanese Com-

pany (1979). Focusing on the organization andsocial structure of the corporation, these booksemphasize Japan’s “corporate welfare.”

Corporate welfarists claim that Japanese com-panies have a unique labor-management relation-ship: they function as social support institutionswhere workers are engaged in an interdependentrelationship with management. This relationshiprequires workers to be loyal and cooperative. Inreturn, the company provides stable employmentand worker participation through consensus deci-sion-making.

According to the corporate welfare school, thecompany works as a benevolent family. Laborpolicies benefit both workers and management,employment is guaranteed for a lifetime, team-work is pervasive, and the wage structure is basedupon seniority. Some have claimed that as a resultof lifetime employment, a “community of fate”develops among employees, resulting in an intenseloyalty to the firm. These claims have created apervasive belief that in Japan, employees work inan environment which functions more like a nur-turing family than like a highly competitive prof-it-making entity. Cole (1979), Abbeglen (1958),and others have written about familial ideologyand its impact on worker behavior. Some say thatthe reason the Japanese are such disciplined work-ers is because of this family-like environment.

One notable book by a native Japanese, SatoshiKamata’s Japan in the Passing Lane (1982), offeredan alternative view of life at a Japanese companywhen it was originally published in 1973. Kamatademonstrated the hardship of life on the line atToyota and claimed the company was more inter-ested in high productivity than in the welfare ofits workers. But Kamata’s book remained largelyoverlooked.

The predominant thinking in the managementdiscipline and manufacturing industry is alignedwith the “production school.” Its adherents be-lieve that the Japanese miracle owes much to“just-in-time manufacturing” where parts are de-livered on time to reduce inventory costs and “pullmanufacturing” a process where a worker can stopthe line if he or she sees quality problems. Themost prominent book from the production tech-nology school was The Machine that Changed the

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World by Womack, Jones, and Roos, based onresearch funded by GM and the IMVP consortiumat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Theauthors explain that the Japanese production sys-tem departs from the Henry Ford assembly linetechniques known as Taylorism. They claim thatif a company adopts the Toyota Production Sys-tem techniques they refer to as “lean production,”that they will not only foster superior productionbut will also provide “challenging and fulfillingwork for employees at every level” (Womack,Jones, and Roos 1990, p. 225).

However, for the majority of American work-ers, the Japanese work system had an entirelydifferent effect than the idyllic life portrayed inthe Machine that Changed the World. The flood ofJapanese products in the 1980s and the resultingtrade deficit led the Japanese to compensate forthe loss of American jobs by locating Japanesefactories in the United States. Automobile “trans-plants” resulted: first in Ohio by Honda, then inTennessee by Nissan, then in California and Ken-tucky by Toyota. With these plants came a sup-posedly new form of organization based on theJapanese concepts of empowerment and the team.Management claimed that there was no need forunionization because the Japanese way involvescooperation, not confrontation, to resolve workissues. American trade unions naturally viewedthat as a sham and a threat.

Parker and Slaughter’s Choosing Sides: Unionsand the Team Concept (1988) defines lean work as“management by stress” that exposes workers to ahigh degree of exploitation. Fucini and Fucini’sWorking for the Japanese (1990) condemns leanwork as being insensitive to the needs of workers.Other publications that show a more realistic sideof the Japanese miracle are Laurie Graham’s Onthe Line at Subaru-Isuzu (1995), Terry Besser’sTeam Toyota (1996), and Rinehart, Huxley andRobertson’s Just Another Car Factory (1997).These publications are localized studies of thebasic techniques of the Toyota work system thathas dominated the “new” lean way of automobilemanufacturing in the past two decades. AlthoughWomack, Jones, and Roos claim that the funda-mental principles of “lean work” can be applied toany industrial organization with the will to incor-

porate new and innovative techniques, more re-cent scholars claim that “lean work” is a regressionto the old practices of Taylorism.

In actuality, lean work has little to do withimproving the lives of workers and much to dowith producing vehicles with the least amount ofmoney in the quickest time. Recent studies showsimilar conditions to those Satoshi Kamata docu-mented at a Japanese Toyota factory in 1972, andhis book is now held in high esteem. I foundKamata’s account to be highly accurate and appli-cable even today, 30 years after it was first pub-lished.

PeeringUnder theHood:ACloser Lookat the Toyota System

On my first day in the office, when I sat down,I noticed a purple, pocket-sized pamphlet onmy desk. It was titled “This Year’s Company

Goals.” A short slogan beneath the title read,“Working together towards Nizumi’s Goals in the21st Century.” The first page of the pamphletstated three of Nizumi’s long-term goals. The firstwas to “Create a flexible and robust corporatestructure, which is able to respond to the changingcorporate environment, and an attractive corpo-rate culture, in which employees experience thejoy of working, based upon mutual trust betweenlabor and management.” The second goal was “Tounite all Nizumi’s strength to continue inventingnew values and to strive for a profitable and pow-erful existence in the 21st Century.” And the thirdgoal read, “contribute to a prosperous and com-fortable society in harmony with the global envi-ronment and the community.”

The body of the pamphlet discussed the maingoals for the fiscal year, such as cutting costs andimplementing the “Mid-Term ManagementPlan.” The last page listed the standard of conductemployees were expected to follow. Workers wereto “recognize the value of bonding with societyand becoming good citizens.” All morning, I sawpurple pamphlets poking out of the pockets ofmanagers but most employees just left them ontheir desk. That subtle cue would later be a per-vasive theme that punctuated my experience:what management said and did were two funda-


mentally different matters, and what employeessaid and how they felt about their experiences,were just as divergent. By extension, what West-ern observers had reported about the Toyota Wayand Team Toyota missed fundamental elementsthat were obscured to them by the opaque natureof Japanese social and cultural norms.

Working as an engineer for three years in Ja-pan, I learned first-hand that there was a darkerside to the lean production model. I had heardwonderful things about working for Japanese com-panies – especially about how they valued theteam. I heard that one of the reasons Americancars were falling apart was the lack of teamwork intheir production. And I hadn’t yet read The Ma-chine That Changed the World. I didn’t read thebook until much later, after I had spent three yearsworking in Japan, at which point I was in a goodposition to judge its accuracy.

The inaccuracies of the Machine that Changedthe World further motivated me to provide myviewpoint about work at a Japanese company. Forinstance, one of the supposed benefits of leanwork is that it requires only half the manufactur-ing space than might be expected. But the reasonlean work consumes less space is not due to asuperior production system but to gross negligenceby the company, which subordinates the safety ofits workers to lowering plant costs. At Nizumi, Iwas shocked to find machinery jammed into everysquare inch on the line, creating constant safetyhazards.

Books like The Machine That Changed the Worldjust look at the numbers without any regard to thehuman costs of lean work implementation. Theytalk about high productivity and extol the fastassembly-line speeds. But on these lines, workersmust work every second of every minute, withouta moment for a break. After leaving Nizumi, I wasintroduced to the director of the Aichi LaborInstitute in Nagoya, who sat me down with afifteen-year veteran of Toyota Motors. I asked thisworker about lean work, and he replied that theline speeds are so fast that “workers do not evenhave a second to wipe the sweat off their faces.”

Some workers that I knew were consideringwhat they would do when their Nizumi contractsexpired. They considered working at the Toyota

factory where SUVs were manufactured, but oneof them told me that although the pay was good,he refused to work in such a dangerous environ-ment. The lines were even faster at Toyota plantsthan at the group companies – and they weremuch too fast even at Nizumi.

In the 278 pages of The Machine that Changedthe World there is not a single quote from thepeople who work within the system: the employ-ees who dedicate their lives to hard work on theline and in the office. While the book is highlyinfluential, it has also been criticized by scholarsaround the world as a gross misrepresentation ofthe Japanese work system and as a threat to tradeunions everywhere.

ANewTheoryof JapaneseManagement

Based on my experience as a participant-observer,I would suggest that another theory of work be-yond production technology governs life atToyota. This theory holds that a “culture of rules”determines what goes on in the Japanese work-place. All rules fall into three major categories.The first category is the written rules that aredistributed in company booklets or are printedand hung on company walls and bulletin boards.The second category comprises unwritten rulesthat the employee learns through observation orexperience at the company, particularly in his orher section or team. In the third category are rulesthat are learned culturally, simply by being Japa-nese or living in Japan. These rules include theproper language and gestures to be used in speak-ing to a superior.

Rules were also of two different types: formaland informal. Formal rules were those that couldbe enforced through social mechanisms of controlor by management. Informal rules were those thatcould not be enforced, such as slogans or mottos.Some rules overlapped categories and types, butcollectively all the rules help construct an ex-pected code of behavior. A culture of rules coercesemployees to share attitudes, values, and goals asdefined by the group, the team, or the entirecorporation.

The company hierarchy and relationshipswithin the groups provide the organizationalstructure within which the culture of rules is com-

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municated and enforced. The family ideology ofthe company defines management as parents andemployees as children—an embedded hierarchythat binds workers, management, and their rules.Breaking a rule leads to punishment in which theerrant employee is used as an example to others.Employees learn about these rule-infringementsand their consequences through drinking partiesand company gossip. Social mechanisms of con-trol such as monitoring and bullying help keep theworkers in line. Monitoring provides the informa-tion for the bullies to use. Bullies are typicallymembers of an old-boy group who have developeda close relationship to an important and powerfulmanager. The open-space office at Nizumi (andmost Japanese companies) facilitates both moni-toring and bullying. It is important that the em-ployee who is the subject of harassment be humil-iated in front of other members of his group.

Employees are expected to follow all rules andobey the prescribed code of behavior that exists atthe company. Rules at Nizumi are generally con-text-oriented in that they apply to the section,team, or group whose leaders create and imple-ment them. At times the rules are vague, allowingmanagement the flexibility to blame the workersat will. The future of the employee depends onhow well that person follows the rules his boss haslaid down. The most powerful rules are unwrittenand can only be learned by observation. Breakingan unwritten rule, however, can expose a workerto harassment and punishment.

Although recent studies provide valuable in-sight into work at Japanese companies, they focuson work either in the office or on the assemblyline. My ethnographic study, however, examinesboth kinds of work. The TPS is certainly lean, butit is also unhealthy and dangerous. This bookquestions the very fundamentals of the lean worksystem. In the office, “lean” means engineers areoverloaded with tasks. In the factory, it means thatworkers on the line are continuously at risk of beingseriously injured. It is not coincidental that none ofthe employees at the company, neither at the officenor in the factory, have an effective union. TheJapanese enterprise union system is merely anotherway management controls workers.

I also undertook a thorough examination of

familial ideology that is often heralded by the“corporate welfare” school. I suggest that this ide-ology is used to bind workers to the culture ofrules, and I argue that the reason the Japanese arediligent and disciplined workers is not becausethey feel an obligation toward a company thatprovides them with many benefits, but becausethey are working within rules that tightly controlevery aspect of their behavior. Workers acquiesceto the demands of management simply becausethey have no choice. In observing and document-ing the role of women at Nizumi, I also saw howwomen are coerced into traditional gender roles.

Finally, there are two concepts inherent inJapanese culture that must be explained in orderto understand fully how national culture impactsthe culture of work. Indeed, the distinctions inJapanese culture between what one publicly ad-mits and privately feels often obscures real mean-ing in situations for non-Japanese, and especiallyWestern, observers. My Japanese colleagues oftentalked to me about a distinction which is funda-mental to understanding Japanese culture andbusiness: tatemae (what you are supposed to feel ordo) and honne (what you actually feel or do).

Imagine getting a haircut in Japan. When thebarber begins cutting, you notice he is makingmany mistakes. When he is finished, your hairlooks terrible. Yet when the barber asks “How isthe haircut?” you respond, “It looks great.” Yourefrain from criticizing or confronting the barberbecause it is bad behavior in Japan to embarrasssomeone in public You leave the barbershop andswear you will never return again.

In this case the tatemae was your response thatthe hair “looks great” when in fact your truefeeling, the honne, is that you are furious becauseit looks awful.

In Japan, if two employees disagree with eachother, it is considered bad behavior to be confron-tational. You are supposed to fake a good-naturedrelationship and not show your true feelings. Inmy interviews with workers, I would often inquireabout the management’s behavior and in caseafter case, tatemae and honne were used to explaincompany policy. The company’s policies were tate-mae, and the underlying realities were honne.

As a foreigner I was challenged by the inherent


tatemae/honne contradiction, but I believe that theJapanese experience both the tatemae and thehonne simultaneously and without hypocrisy. Jap-anese workers who had spent some time workingabroad, however, seemed almost as baffled as I wasabout the complex levels of meaning in the cul-ture they were rejoining.

I believe that international enthusiasm for theToyota Production System results from westernobservers’ failure to discern the honne within thetatemae. It has been easy (but erroneous) to ac-cept the tatemae as given, and to write about itwithout regard to the Japanese realities or to anypossible losses in translation. But tatemae, honne,and other phenomena of the Japanese workplacerelease their meanings only to observers whospend time in the culture.

TheHiddenCostsofProductivity

Discussed below are my findings on the corpo-rate culture at Toyota and the impact of theTPS system on product innovation, the prod-

uct development cycle, team collaboration, healthand safety, management strategies, and employeemorale. They are accompanied by descriptive ev-idence from discussions, company literature, andother primary sources to illustrate these points.While there is always some bias in the conduct ofethnography, in recording my journals and ana-lyzing the data I have sought to be as objective aspossible.

1.ProductDevelopment:Innovation fromWithout

Toyota is considered one of the most innovativeautomobile designers and manufacturers in theworld—but responsibility for this moniker doesnot lie solely with the company’s actual engineersor talent. Instead, Toyota tends to purchase inno-vation from smaller companies—it doesn’t makeit—or adapt designs already being used in theindustry. Rarely do new ideas emerge from withinthe company, particularly the engineering depart-ment. With a lockstep and rigid management cul-ture, tied firmly to Japanese culture, there is noroom for expressing basic creativity in the designprocess. Even when engineers attempted to brain-

storm or mine for new ideas, the cultural andorganizational structure dampened creativity.Toyota instead relied on small consulting firms,national labs, and information from dealers andthe industry on key technologies to realize inno-vation. They grew to rely on outside expertise andcreativity, because they had to—there was a pol-icy to create from within, but it failed.

Problem-Solving. A key to understandingToyota’s approach to innovating products is theproblem-solving approach used by engineers, inparticular—an approach driven as much by Japa-nese culture as the Toyota Way. During conten-tious weekly technical meetings convened everyFriday, I learned how Japanese engineers engagedin problem-solving. To arrive at the best design,the engineers would gather huge amounts of in-formation, comparing new designs with previousdesigns. If the technology unearthed by their re-search could benefit the product in any way, theywould include it in the many alternatives theywere considering. Sobek, Ward and Liker’s re-search compare Toyota’s approach to product de-velopment as set-based design where “designersthink and reason about sets of design alternatives.Over time, these sets are gradually narrowed as thedesigners eliminate inferior alternatives until theyfind a final solution.” They claim this methoddiffers from the conventional practice of choosinga single design early on and iterating to improve ituntil a solution is obtained. I would soon learnthat set-based design was used extensively at Ni-zumi. Comparing one design to another was con-sidered the best way to evaluate the advantages ofeach.

This approach was often codified in the manymemos and newsletters that were circulated in theoffice. My section manager once distributed amemo called “The Vision Method.” This was astep-by- step directive about engaging engineers inthe set-based process. One of the steps was “De-ciding the Subject.” The step read: “To achievethe goal, you must think about as many ideas asyou can and write them down. Then you mustchoose the best idea from all of the ideas.”

In general, entertaining abstract concepts wasnever encouraged; instead, a focus on detail wasrequired. I observed a similar emphasis on detail

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during Friday technical meetings. A debate aboutthe basic physics of the engineering phenomenararely occurred. Only concrete information thatcould be validated through experiments orthrough previous designs was considered accept-able for discussion.

Breadth versus Depth of Technical Skill.Many scholars have lauded the deep knowledgeexhibited and applied by Toyota and kereitsu en-gineers and attributed the company’s success incontinuous improvement to deep technical skillwithin a discipline. However, in my experience aspart of product development, it became clear thatthis approach has its limitations, particularlywhen coupled with a workplace culture that doesnot allow the free flow of ideas, open discussionand debate, true team collaboration, and exten-sive intelligence about how one’s part fits in thewhole of a product or process. The narrow expe-rience means that engineers following the ToyotaWay only know one path, their own, and oftenmust follow it blindly under the strict direction oftheir superiors—which fundamentally limits theability of engineers to “think outside of the box”and develop original designs. Moreover, engineersoften become stuck in one career path at onecompany, because their skills are so highly special-ized. As one weary colleague lamented, “I wouldleave if I could, but no one would hire me with theeconomy down like this. The problem with Japa-nese engineers is that we are too narrowly special-ized. If we are shifted from one company to an-other, we don’t do as well, so we are not motivatedto move, even if we are unhappy with our situa-tions.”

The Role of Espionage in Design. Stealingtechnology and industrial espionage frequentlycame up during conversations with employees atthe company, and it was apparently a fairly com-mon practice in the Japanese auto industry. Ni-zumi was incredibly secretive about sharing tech-nology. Not a single bit of information about aproduct could be sent out without approval fromabove. In most cases, even if the products werealready in production, the management refused toshare the information. Even during meetingswhere they could clearly benefit from an open

discussion, the engineers always remainedguarded.

I didn’t fully understand the extent of indus-trial espionage until I attended the annual TokyoMotor show. The management required all engi-neers to attend, and upon our return, we would fillout a document about significant developments atthe show that were relevant to Nizumi’s products.As Higuchi, my boss, and I walked around thelarge auditorium, he pointed to some importantexhibits that I should investigate. At the show,each company had a booth, and smiling womenneatly dressed in company uniforms greeted thevisitors. The new technology on display forced theengineers to discuss the latest developments, butthey never revealed very much. They spoke en-thusiastically about their products, but tried des-perately to conceal any technical information thatcould be used by their competitors. None of theengineers engaged in open conversation, and ev-eryone kept to themselves and traveled in smallgroups. I noticed one group of engineers suddenlypause to examine the shape of a certain part. Theengineer at the booth watched this group closely.

When I returned to Higuchi, he said that a fewyears ago the Motor Show was more open. Then agroup of engineers from Honda entered a Toyotacar on display and made measurements of theentire vehicle. “For what reason?” I asked. “Tocopy it,” he said. “A few months later Honda cameout with an exact copy of that car!”

Purchasing Expertise. In addition to borrow-ing ideas from industry, Toyota group companiesoften purchase innovation directly from outsideconsultants and other sources. At the same time Iwas helping to redesign the drivetrain of a primaryproduct, I was informed that an engineer from thewell-know German consulting firm ATN wouldbe coming to the company to discuss our project.Why would a German engineer be working withus, privy to proprietary information? Later thatday, a European colleague raced to my desk andsaid, almost panting, that Nizumi had hired ATNto design the product. “It’s just crazy,” he said,“ATN is going to be working on the design!”

“What?” I said. “But we’re already designingit!”

“The plan is to have ATN design their own


version of the drivetrain while we design it inde-pendently.”

I couldn’t understand why they would go to somuch trouble. Why spend the extra time andmoney to design it in-house when the product wasbeing designed by an outside firm?

At the meeting, two senior Toyota engineersbegan by presenting their designs, laying out CADdrawings of the assembly showing every bolt,curve, and surface. The level of detail was impres-sive, but Rolf, the ATN representative, asked howthe parts could work together without major mal-functions. His idea of the product was differentfrom theirs. He presented a fundamental reasonwhy they should design it his way, but they did notagree. Rolf gave another reason, and they arguedback and forth. During the discussion, the seniorToyota engineers would always drag Rolf intotalking about details. Rolf, however, would discussthe basics of the design, backing his reasons withfundamentals.

Then the German began talking about theAdvanced XT37 design. He pointed to a part ofthe design that would dramatically reduce its ef-ficiency, offering logical reasons why it would notwork well. One of the senior Toyota engineersasked, “How do you know if will be inefficient ifyou don’t have any data!” Rolf started gettingangry. “I don’t need data!” He explained againwhat was wrong.

He then turned to me, asking why the XT37was not well-designed. I told him that the fault laywith casting. He proceeded to criticize the entirecasting technology at Nizumi and advised how wecould improve overall efficiency if we made cer-tain changes. Then he listed all the German com-panies that would be happy to sell us the productsnecessary for these essential improvements.

I found it significant that a company world-renowned for its products had remained depen-dent on the West for its basic technology. Fromwhat I had experienced at Nizumi—the emphasison secrecy, the lack of creativity, the stifling workenvironment—I could understand why the com-pany hired consultants. The managers in Ad-vanced Design needed their expertise. They didnot have the organizational or educational cre-ativity to come up with their own advances, and

they knew that the European products were farmore innovative than any Japanese products onthe market. It was a clever strategy. They wereable to obtain key technology for the Japanesemarket that had already been designed for theEuropean market.

Benchmarking, Not Brainstorming. A projectthat involved the design of a device to reduce theaerodynamic drag of a vehicle was indicative ofthe approach to innovation employed at Ni-zumi—one that relied heavily on benchmarkingand inductive reasoning, rather than abstractthinking, and left little room for original ideas toemerge. Instead, elaborate systems of benchmark-ing existing products and attempts to improveupon their existing design within a cost marginwas the strategy used in product development.

The drag is the amount of force pushing againsta vehicle in the opposite direction to which thecar is moving, and reducing the drag results inbetter gas mileage. Although drag reducers existedin the industry, Nizumi had never designed one,so we would have to start from scratch (or so Ithought). For inspiration, I consulted my fluidmechanics textbook. I thought about the basicphysics of the design problem and worked outsome equations. After a few days, I approachedHiguchi with my ideas. Higuchi looked at measkance and demanded, “How do you know this?We’ve never designed a drag-reducer before?”

Now I was confused. Hadn’t he expected me touse my engineering education and experience todevelop a creative design? No, he had not. Thenext day, I discovered the approach he preferred.Suzuki walked into the office with a large card-board poster showing pictures of all the drag-reducing products currently used in the industry.He’d gotten these pictures from industry maga-zines. Higuchi got very excited and studied eachone, while Suzuki looked on proudly. We dis-cussed the merits of some specific designs, thenHiguchi told us to create CAD models and analyzethem using computational fluid dynamics (CFD)software on all of them so we could compare themand see which was best. (Many companies wereusing CFD as a way to simulate the physics of fluidflow on products to improve efficiency beforebuilding prototypes.)

2006 29Mehri

The process of comparing designs is commonlyreferred to as benchmarking, which was often thetopic of departmental meetings. Our sectionleader, Uno announced we would benchmark aEuropean competitor’s product, which was ru-mored to incorporate the most advanced technol-ogy in the industry. Enormous effort had beenexpended in displaying how the European designcompared with Nizumi’s and other competitors’similar products. Large, excruciatingly detailedcharts filled the walls, comparing efficiency, gasmileage, and other indicators. All the relevantparts had been cut up and placed on a table for usto examine. Each part was compared with thecorresponding parts of the competition’s products.The benchmark was so thorough that there waseven a comparison of the number of bolts use toput the products together. All parts on displaywere documented and filed on the intranet so thatany engineer in the company could have access tothe information at any time.

At Nizumi, benchmarking was a crucial part ofthe design process. During design meetings, eachengineer was required to show the main designparameters for the optimal design of the product.For example, if product efficiency was the maincriterion, the chart would be a spreadsheet con-sisting of the design parameters in the columnsand the manufacturer’s design of that parameter inthe rows, with each cell containing the numericalefficiency. Each design parameter was graded ac-cording to efficiency, cost, and ease of manufac-ture. From this information, a preliminary proto-type was produced, and after further investigation,the final prototype was made. Then the engineerswould improve the design in the technical lab oron the computer by tweaking various design pa-rameters and adding new technology whenneeded. After further testing, the part was thenmanufactured.

Benchmarking was used at all levels of productdevelopment: in research and development, inproduct design, and in market analysis. It was notnecessarily used to copy other products but wasthought to speed up the design process. Analysisof and experiment on an existing product was thebasic approach to designing a new one. Therewere several technicians at the company whose

only job was to take apart the competitor’s prod-ucts, test them, and write up the results for engi-neers.

In planning for a brainstorming meeting thatwas called to discuss the new drag reducer, I spentmany days thinking of the basic physics of theproduct and engaging in analysis. When the daycame, each engineer was called upon to presentour new product designs. I was surprised when allthe other engineers brought in designs of productsthat had already been developed or manufacturedby other companies. Suzuki (a colleague) and an-other engineer showed a design that came from acompany’s brochure. When my turn came, I pre-sented some novel ideas based on my analysisalone. I should not have been surprised when theother engineers took me to task for doing it now.Their approach to problem-solving was com-pletely different from mine. They had been edu-cated to engage in an inductive process, while asan American-educated engineer, I had beentrained to use deduction. Deductive reasoning andabstract ideas were critical to who I was as aWesterner. Engineers at Nizumi, however, had torely on previously documented engineering resultswhen they set out about creating a new design.

The inductive process, along with the author-itarian hierarchy and a disinclination to engage indebate was one reason why Nizumi was rarelyinnovative. When it came to the details of adesign, the Japanese were brilliant, but when itcame to creativity, they were disappointing. Sev-eral Japanese engineers themselves agreed thatthey were “good at manufacturing products, butterrible at innovation.”

Although genuinely new ideas were rare at thecompany, management policies theoretically re-warded innovation, and we were often pressuredto produce patent submissions. Uno (the sectionmanager) talked about the heat he was receivingfrom Abe (the division manager), who was press-ing for more submissions from our section. Heintended to use these to evaluate us as workers. Abitter look came to Higuchi’s face, and the excit-able Takanashi jumped up and started arguingwith Uno. His work was to develop computercode, so he would never be submitting a patent,and he didn’t want this to hurt his evaluation.


Suzuki asked me one day if I had submitted anypatents. I told him I had been too busy working onmy computer programs, but he told me it didn’thave to take much time. He reached into a folderand showed me one of his patent submissions. Hesaid he had plucked the idea for it off the Internet.

One thing that both surprised and pleased meat Nizumi was everybody’s eagerness to embracenew technology. Management always urged us toincorporate the latest technology in the drivetrainproduct. Although Abe was a high-level manager,he actively researched the new technologies. Hisprimary sources of information were Western con-sulting firms, American and European universi-ties, and technical conferences. Western consult-ing firms helped Abe decide which technologiesto develop, and he handed this information to hissubordinates, who determined whether the tech-nology was viable for the manufacturing process.It was as if learning new technology was the dutyof every engineer, and the organization supportedthis attitude for fear that the competition wouldgain market share. While it was a forward-lookingprocess and commitment to innovation, it was setwithin a context that emphasized incremental im-provement and not engineering breakthroughs.Although I still believed that Toyota’s productdevelopment process was driven by excellent andthorough engineers, I needed to reassess my priorassumption that it represented excellence and in-novation in engineering.

2. Engineering Silos: TheMany“Is” in Team

Part of the innovation problem emerges from therelative isolation in which most engineers actuallyworked. The perception of the Toyota Way is thatengineers, in particular, work in groups and teamsthat rely on collective knowledge to spur innova-tion. But, in reality those teams represented rigidlydefined groups of like employees who took direc-tion from the manager and worked independentlyof other team members without much consulta-tion or collaboration. There was no free flow ofinformation in the product development process.There were no open conversations. Non-manage-rial engineers did not share their managers’ com-prehensive sense of how all of the parts worktogether, but instead focused solely on their small

part in the whole. Indeed, managers would ordertheir subordinates to carry out certain job tasks,while controlling the flow of all information. Of-ten, when Western scholars describe teamwork,they infer that all Japanese engineers—evenlower level engineers—share information and col-laborate. However, this is simply not true. Allinformation and work was controlled from above.Even in the lunchroom, there was no open talkabout technology or sharing of ideas.

In addition, there was little, if no, collaborationor communication across teams. The research anddesign teams, for example, simply did not talk toone another. All directions come from above.Indeed, one of the only ways it was possible to getinformation from another team was if you person-ally knew the manager of another group or duringan Obeya (big room) meeting organized by man-agers, as described below. Even the social structuremade it difficult for members across teams to haveinformal interaction or discuss projects.

Again, initial impressions of teamwork atToyota in general and Nizumi in particular do notalways belie the subtleties of the developmentprocess or the life of the workplace. Indeed, in myfirst department meeting, I was fascinated by syn-opses of the Manager’s Meetings that had beenheld earlier that week. I was especially impressedby wide-ranging nature of the discussions and bythe value placed on improving quality at the frontend of the design process. I was also impressed bythe emphasis on market share and product qualityinstead of stock values and company profits. Hear-ing about these meetings reinforced my initialimpression that the company thrived on the freeexchange of information and did its best to sup-port its employees. However, as time progressedand my experience deepened, I realized how easyit was to misperceive how the Toyota Way wasimplemented in the workplace. The reality turnedout to be far from the theory.

Working as an Engineer. As I worked on de-signing the part for the new drive-train, I becamefrustrated by the lack of information that my di-rect manager provided. I always received informa-tion on a piece-meal basis. At times it was as if hewas giving me secret “hints” about the technology,and when he finished, there was often an awkward

2006 31Mehri

silence as I waited for more information that nevercame. Even the engineers in my section were notas forthcoming as I expected. During the drive-train design process, I learned a senior managerwas holding a contest to come up with the bestnew drive-train designs. At the meeting to discussthe details, I was surprised when Kurata, who wasthe highly placed Director of the Design Division,bluntly stated that the company’s foreign compet-itors had moved ahead of Nizumi. When I re-turned from the meeting, I approached membersof my section and asked them what they thoughtabout the new designs. To my surprise, they re-acted defensively and avoided discussion, as if Iwas trying to steal their secrets.

Because of my frustrations with Higuchi, I wasinterested in learning how my colleagues inter-acted with their bosses, so I observed them closely.A superior would yell out the name of an engi-neer, who would drop what he was doing and rushto his desk. They would talk about the issue—usually loudly enough for everyone in the sectionto hear. Although the engineers would sometimesraise issues and make objections, in the end, theydeferred to what their manager said. Finally, thesuperior would give the subordinate a direct orderand the engineer would respond with a “hai waka-rimashita” and walk away. Both sides avoided adirect clash of ideas. Now I saw why others hadbeen surprised whenever I raised objections. Al-though I was only trying to create the best design,I was breaking the rules of social conduct.

The concept of “the team” is supposedly centralto Japanese business and manufacturing, but fromworking at Nizumi, I find the term “group” to be amore accurate description. In my section, all theengineers worked in groups of three or four. Eachgroup was composed of engineers who had specificskills. We all worked on projects of little relevanceto the others in our group, yet we were all sup-posed to be working on the same product.

I belonged to the analysis group—composed ofmyself, Higuchi and Takanashi. The goal of theanalysis group was to provide the corporation thelatest in advanced computer simulation technol-ogy. Far from feeling like a member of a “team,” Iworked alone on most projects and simply re-ported to Higuchi with the results. I worked on

designing products while Takanashi worked ondeveloping high-end software that the manage-ment hoped would eventually be used by otherengineers at the company. Although we were bothpart of the analysis group and happened to beimproving the same product, our tasks were simplynot related.

Teams on the Line. Nor was the idealizedteam concept apparent in the production process.I was acquainted with a number of productionworkers at the Nizumi factory, who became keyinformants regarding the workings of the produc-tion system. One production worker, a Thai im-migrant named Sanan, explained to me that heonly received brief training as he was immediatelyimmersed in the Toyota Production System. Hisjob on the line was to fabricate a part of thedrivetrain, and his general duties involved spotwelding the inner and outer portion of the part inrepetitive steps. On Sanan’s line, each section wasdivided into several work groups, each responsiblefor manufacturing a part of the product. I began towonder about the concept of the “team” that I hadheard so much about with reference to the Japa-nese workplace. There was certainly no teamworkin my job, and none of the workers I interviewedtalked about teamwork either. So I asked Sananabout teamwork. He said in most cases, the em-ployees did not function as a team. If somethinghappened on the line, if someone needed assis-tance from another group member—nobodyhelped. “Everyone just does their own work.When you start out at the factory, if you havequestions, people help you, but not after you’velearned your job.” According to Sanan, the mostdirect manifestations of group activity were safetydrills, meetings, and competitions.

Competition between Divisions. The notionof competition pervaded Nizumi’s organizationalculture, and often contributed to strained rela-tions across divisions. This reality became veryclear when I attempted to spread some of thetechnology I had developed in our group to otherdepartments in the company. The method I haddevised to automate CAD part creation dramati-cally sped up the design process, and I thought itwould be of use to the Design Division. I thoughtthat if I convinced the lead of the Design Section,


Oda, to work with me on this project, perhaps myideas might be implemented throughout the com-pany.

While I waited to hear back from Oda, I ap-proached my own boss, Higuchi. I mentioned thatI would like to work with Oda and show him thenew technology I had developed. Higuchi lookedworried. “Those design engineers never listen tomy advice. Whenever I have anything new to tellthem, they’ve always been too busy to listen.” Itold him if the technology was successful that Iwouldn’t mind starting our own CAD group withthe section. Higuchi seemed even more upset withthis suggestion. “The problem is if you work onone of their projects, they will ask you to work onanother, and another, and then you will be toobusy to do our work.” I promised him thatwouldn’t happen, but he continued to resist. I waseventually able to convince him to let me give asimple demonstration of the technology to theDesign Section.

Although Higuchi allowed me to meet withOda, he continued to be negative about workingwith Oda’s group. A colleague explained why. Hesaid that managers in the Design and ResearchDivision did not get along. “Once I worked on aproject with the Design Department, and Unofound out and got very angry with me,” he said.“In a meeting with my group, he pointed his fingerat me and yelled, ‘Don’t you ever work with theDesign Department again!’ Since then, if it’s nec-essary to work with them, I just do it secretly.”

According to my colleague, the conflict beganin the mid-1980s, when the gikan, an extremelypowerful manager who provided the companywith technical “vision” decided that Nizumineeded a separate research department. Previ-ously, research and design existed as one depart-ment. When many top engineers were recruitedfrom design to join the new research section,funding became a serious issue, and the researchestablished itself as an elite group. As a result, thetwo groups spent much time and energy vying forpower instead of spending time improving thetechnology. Communication between the sectionspractically ceased.

After the demonstration, my tool was receivedso well that Oda wanted me to join his group. I

was flattered, but told him that I wasn’t interested,for I had come to like working with Higuchi. Lateron, when I talked with Oda about the projectagain, his plans were vague. I didn’t hear from himfor several days, and every time I approached himto hold a design meeting, Oda evaded the subject.Finally, I realized that my colleague had beenright, after all: you had to choose a division, youcould not be in both.

Working as an American-educated engineerwas not without its frustrations. The way I learnedfrom Higuchi and discussed the technology wasvery different from the way I learned in the West.I would frequently ask him questions about designconsiderations. He would respond with very spe-cific answers, never discussing the concepts ab-stractly. All discussions about technology wereconcrete. While I would always begin my talkswith Higuchi with a discussion of basic ideas, hewould immediately focus on the details. Oncewhen I brought him 3D pictures of a design I wasconsidering, Higuchi bent forward and put hishead right up to a small part of the model. He said,“What about this?”

“What?”“This,” he said, pointing to a tiny speck on the

model. I thought he was pulling my leg—but hewas serious. I was beside myself that he wouldconsider such a small detail while ignoring thebeauty of the overall design. But remembering Iwas a kohai (the subordinate) to him, my senpai(mentor), I just said I would look at it and wentback to work.

I did express my disagreement sometimes, butthis was invariably frustrating and time-consum-ing. Higuchi was usually surprised that I wouldquestion his wisdom at all, and we would discussthe issue at length, arguing back and forth, withme focusing on the abstract and him on the de-tails. In the end, he wouldn’t budge, so we wouldend up right where we had started.

In retrospect, most of the time he was correct.After all, he was the more experienced engineer.But what I found irritating was the assumptionthat there was only one way to approach thedesign project—his way, to focus on the concrete.Unless I had concrete results to show him, hewouldn’t even consider what I had to say. How-

2006 33Mehri

ever, if I could prove my ideas with results, hewould affably and easily change his mind.

3. ThePriceof Toyota’sProduction System:WorkerHealthandSafety

“Safety number one!” The slogan was ubiquitous.It hung over the entrances to the factory, it ap-peared in the dozens of pages of literature we allreceived every month, and one day when I cameto work I saw that all the managers were wearing“Safety Number One” arm badges. I asked Higuchiabout these badges, and he told me that a seniormanager had ordered them to be worn because ofa recent accident in the factory. An employee hadbeen hit on the back of the head by a piece ofmachinery and had been sent to the hospital.However, the person injured wasn’t an ordinaryassembly line worker. He was a college-educatedengineer on his obligatory six-month assignmentto the factory. During their first year of work, allengineers at Toyota’s largest companies are re-quired to work six months in the factory.

A commitment to safety at Toyota is pro-claimed in every corner, hallway, desk, and stationon the line; however, I witnessed that it repre-sented little more than a public relations gestureor, worse, a way of shifting responsibility for safetyonto workers and away from management. What Ilearned about the frequency of injury, the longhours, working conditions, and pressure placed onproduction workers soon made the company’s of-ficial line about safety ring hollow.

A few weeks after the engineer was injured, Iwas in the factory to examine some parts. A largebanner hung on the side of the main factorybuilding reading, “It’s safety week, let’s work hardto make our shop clean and safe.” Beside theslogan was a large green cross symbolizing safety. Ithought the company was actually implementinga real safety program. Surely managementwouldn’t bother hanging this banner if theyweren’t serious, would they?

A colleague grabbed my shoulder to pull meaway from a forklift that was being driven at highspeed, saying, “Be careful, it’s dangerous aroundhere.”

I pointed up to the banner and yelled over thedin, “What’s this about?”

“It’s because of the shareholder meeting. Thecompany wants to make a good impression.”Laughing, he continued, “Every week is safetyweek at Nizumi—but it makes no difference,nothing will change.” There was one way, how-ever, that the workers were actively involved inimproving safety during safety week. They all par-ticipated in a poster contest, and the winners werepublished in the safety newsletter.

A production worker reiterated what everyonehad told me, that the line was abunai, or danger-ous. The line speed was the main danger. “Work-ing with heavy machinery is always dangerous, butthe problem is they work the line so fast thataccidents are frequent. Many guys at the companyhave lost their fingers.” On a theoretically averageday, his team was required to make a total of 120products, which mean spending three minutes oneach product. However, the quota was often raisedto 132 products, or more, so the production timewas correspondingly reduced per product, leadingto a faster pace and more accidents.

According to Shuzo Sasaki of the Aichi LaborInstitute, an organization with more than 30 yearsof experience studying Toyota and their group-related companies, the largest contribution to ac-cidents on the line is the fast line speeds. “Fastline speeds contribute greatly to work-related ac-cidents and health problems. We have noticed ahigh blood pressure rate, hearing problems, work-related injuries, and death directly related to fastline speeds. About 50 percent of all workers havework-related illnesses but are still forced to work.”(Interview 2000) The Institute has recorded linespeeds as fast as 58 seconds per minute, but manyworkers claim they have not even one second torest.

Flexible manufacturing sounds like a good idea,for it requires each worker to use a number of skillsin the course of the day. But it also makes workingwith fast line speeds more dangerous, because itincreases the overall time necessary to finish theday’s quota. Sometimes the employees are re-quired to work on products they don’t make oftenand for which they have received little training,and this, too, creates safety problems.

Although the production worker I knew andhis group engaged in morning safety drills and


kaizen meetings, the line was still unsafe, not onlybecause of its speed but also because of the factorylayout. The workplace was crowded and stockedwith poorly designed equipment, so there wasn’tenough room to move around on the line. Hecomplained about the jig, which is a machine tomechanically hold and move the position of partsduring assembly, “When you work the jig, it turns,and sometimes your body touches the buttonswhich control the tools.” This situation contrib-utes to accidents.

“One guy was seriously injured. He had to puta very small part on the drivetrain, and it droppedinside the jig. When he reached down to pick itup, he bent his other arm back and accidentallyhit the button. The jig crushed his hand.” He toldme about a time he’d injured himself on the line.“I had burned my arm from the welder and it gotinfected. I had to go to the company hospital andthe doctor put my arm in a large bandage. WhenI went back to work, the group leader was angrywith me! He yelled at me and sent me back on theline.”

If a worker was seriously injured and couldn’tpossibly go back to the line, he would receivecompensation. However, the worker was requiredto come in to work, even if his injuries prohibitedhim from doing his job. In a later interview withYoshiatsu Sato of the Aichi Labor Institute, Ilearned that Toyota and its group-related compa-nies have institutionalized this hidden rule formany years. “At Toyota, even if a worker’s acci-dent is so severe that he loses a body part, he mustcome to the company and sit and do nothing.” Inthis way, the company avoids recording injuriesand the management can project a safe image ofitself to the Japanese people.

Kaizen, in Theory and Practice. I visited thefactory as often as I could and met with a friendfrom the production line, Kofi, who was a contractworker from Africa. Our brief visits gave him anopportunity to air some of his grievances, and hespoke freely of his work on the line, describing theprocess to me.

He said that one product after another camethrough while he welded them. He showed me thenumbering system on the wall, which indicatedthe amount of products made per day. Kofi said,

“When a worker makes a mistake, the line stops,and we find a solution.” The worker pushes one ofthree lights to signal the danger level: a greenlight means no danger, a gold light means theworker needs mild assistance, and a red lightmeans a worker is in danger and needs help rightaway. When the gold light goes on, maybe oneperson comes to help, but many more rush over ifthe light is red. If the andon cord (which stops theline) is pulled for quality problems, a team pullsthe vehicle over to work on it while the line startsup again. After the problem has been fixed, a topquality-control supervisor goes to the floor to in-spect the vehicle.

I brought up the issue of kaizen with Kofi.Kaizen meetings were called KYT on the line, inJapanese, kikken yochin training, meaning dangerawareness training. “Improvement meetings arevital to the way Japanese work,” he said. It was ajob requirement for all workers in his group tomeet every Tuesday after work to discuss improv-ing safety and production. Management would askfor suggestions, but since Kofi was only a contract,or temporary, worker, they never gave him creditfor his ideas, even when they implemented them.

The bell sounded, and our visit was over. Ireturned to the white-collar world. I entered theoffice and sat down at my desk. Thinking aboutthe men in the factory, I picked up one of theaccident reports, and saw a drawing of a man on aconveyer belt. The man had climbed onto theconveyer belt when it was operating and had beenkilled. “It happened at Toyota,” a colleague hadsaid. “It’s not unusual for someone to lose their lifein a factory in Japan.” He handed the report backto me, and I took a closer look. The man’s headhad been crushed between the car and the frameof the conveyer belt.

I learned more about conditions at Toyotawhen I went to a dinner party. Our host hadworked at Nizumi, but recently began working onthe line at the Toyota plant. I asked why he’dchanged jobs, and he told me the money wasbetter. However high pay came at a high price. Herolled up his sleeve and showed me his arm, whichhad burn marks on it from spot welding. He saidhe worked with inadequate equipment and thathe was not provided with proper welding clothes.

2006 35Mehri

The molten metal had burned right through hisshirt.

I was surprised to hear stories about conditionson the line told by Octavio, a production workerwho was a Peruvian of Japanese descent. It wasone thing to have occasional accidents, but an-other to have reckless safety policies. Toyota wasso profitable that they often boasted about their$21 billion cash reserve. Couldn’t a company thatwas so wealthy provide their workers with basicsafety clothing and better working conditions?Not only that—Octavio told me that the line wasso fast it was almost impossible not to injure your-self. He had to work constantly, 60 full seconds forevery minute on the line, with not a moment torest. At that speed, accidents were unavoidable.

In fact, that year Nizumi was designated thethird most dangerous auto company in Japan. Thegovernment ranked all of the large automobilecompanies according to safety based on accidentreports. We all knew about the safety rankingsystem because the report was distributed on ourdesks and discussed during meetings. One of theobjectives of the report was to “shame” companiesinto improving safety. Managers began checkingequipment before the day’s work. Although itseemed like a preventive safety measure, in realityit helped to relieve the company from providingcompensation to injured workers. “Workers whoare injured get compensation only if they canprove that the condition of the machine was atfault,” Octavio told me. “If they are to blame, theyreceive nothing. But it’s often difficult to decidewho was at fault, the machine or the worker.”

“So who is ultimately responsible for safety?” Iasked.

“Managers are supposed to be responsible forsafety, so if something happens, they get in trou-ble. So the rule is—injured workers keep theirmouths shut. Workers who break this rule areoften threatened with dismissal. The only timethey do not cover up accidents is when someone isseriously injured, if they lose a finger or hand, andthere are witnesses. In actuality, the workersthemselves are responsible for their own safety.”

Articles in the company newsletters supportedOctavio’s claims. They often discussed safetyproblems within the context of human error. An

article titled “Meeting of the Safety and HygieneCommittee” quoted the need “to implementsafety control keeping in mind that human beingsare liable to act unsafely.”

Many accidents occur because of lack of train-ing. Kofi told me about an incident where both aJapanese and a foreign worker handled a piece ofheavy machinery. While they were lowering it,the foreigner’s hands got stuck between two largepieces of metal, and when the guy screamed, theJapanese worker didn’t hear him. “He was wearingheadphones to block the noise,” Kofi said, “but hewasn’t supposed to wear headphones while doing ajob like that.” He added that management onlyenforced rules after an accident happens. “Theyenforce some rules for a short time before aban-doning them again. They’re only interested ingetting the work done.”

I thought about the idyllic work system I hadheard so much about and wondered why kaizenhad not been implemented. After all, if workershad the ability to improve the system, certainlythe company would benefit. I asked Kofi aboutthis. They did go through the motions of kaizen.When an accident occurred, many would con-verge on the site to study exactly what happened.Someone would write a report. However, it usu-ally changed nothing. Kofi added, “We havekaizen meetings twice a week to try to improvesafety, and sometimes they are very useful. Mostlythey are not, so no one pays attention—we sleepor smoke cigarettes.” So much for kaizen.

Accident Reports and Hiding Injuries. Howwas the company able to keep its image clean?How could it get away with reckless behavior?Although Kofi had worked for more than six yearsat the company, and either saw or heard aboutmany accidents, he did not know of a single inci-dent in which the company was blamed for theproblem, even if the worker received compensa-tion. If the worker was temporary and he couldn’treturn to work because of his injuries, he wasimmediately dismissed. If his injuries were notthat severe, he would not be immediately dis-missed, but his contract would not be renewed.Even if he wasn’t injured, if a contract employeewas involved in an accident, no matter whose


fault it was, his contract was unconditionally ter-minated. No exceptions were allowed.

Even if the machine was defective, the workerwas blamed. Once, when a conveyer belt broughta batch of parts, there was a power failure, and aworker injured his heel. The worker was blamedfor the accident. Another time, and employee waslate for work, and while running to his section, heslipped on oil that had been previously spilled onthe floor. He injured his knee. “There was bloodall over the place—it was so bad, that an ambu-lance came to the factory,” Kofi said. That workerwas not allowed to renew his contract.

When an accident occurred, reports were com-pleted and distributed to employees. In the office,they were passed to our section and in the factorythey were hung on bulletin boards. They alwaysincluded a detailed illustration showing how theaccident occurred. According to Kofi, accidentreports were often modified in favor of the com-pany, especially if the worker was a regular em-ployee. Lower-level supervisors would modify thereports for fear of punishment by upper-level man-agement.

Management continually piled accident reportsonto our desks, not only those that occurred atNizumi, but also about those that occurred at anumber of Toyota-group-related companies. Bylaw, when an industrial accident occurs, Japanesecorporations must provide a report to the Ministryof Labor. Those reports always included illustra-tions showing in gory detail workers losing bodyparts, getting their hands trapped in machinery,breaking bones, or getting burned. There seemedto be no end to these reports. We received themon a weekly basis, sometimes a few at a time. Inmany cases, a dozen or so were stapled togetherand dropped on our desks.

A typical example of a report discussed theinjury of a 24-year-old employee. It stated the dateof the accident and the extent of the injury: “acompressed chest that led to serious lung injuries.”The injury occurred when the worker stepped offa floor mat to pick up an instruction board thathad dropped. The mat was connected to a switchthat controlled the machinery, and when it wasactivated it caused the machinery to disengage.

The worker’s body became trapped between aheavy piece of machinery and a building pillar.

What was the real purpose of these reports?They could certainly be said to reduce accidentsby instructing workers to learn from the mistakesof others, but I questioned whether that was thecompany’s true intentions. After I left the com-pany, I talked with Dr. Shinya Yamada, a Japaneselabor specialist. Dr. Yamada is emeritus professorof the Faculty of Medicine at Nagoya Universityand one of Japan’s leading occupational healthand safety experts. I mentioned the case of theyoung man with the lung injury, and he said theaccident could have been prevented had they notlocated the machinery so close to the wall. Fur-thermore, he said that the machinery had a seriousdesign flaw, because when the worker gets off themat, the pause is released. A safer design wouldhave involved a way to activate the pause with abutton, so when he reached down to pick up theinstruction board, he would not have been at risk.“It’s likely they implemented the current design tokeep the line moving as quickly as possible.”

Dr Yamada derided the preventive measuresmanagement suggested to workers in the accidentreports. By looking at the preventive measureswith Dr. Yamada, I saw the true intention of thecorporation, the honne behind the tatemae, andthat was to blame workers for accidents.

According to Dr. Yamada, hiding injuries is along-standing, pervasive, and hidden rule at mostcorporations in Japan. He explained that compa-nies have an economic incentive to hide injuries.“The financial management for workman’s com-pensation is strictly separate from NationalHealth Care. If a worker experiences a privateinjury and he goes to a local hospital, he is cov-ered by National Health Care Insurance, and thecompany is required to pay 50 percent of the cost.However, if the worker obtains workman’s com-pensation, the company must provide full pay-ment for all medical expenses.”

Employees were also coerced into complicitsilence about accidents on the job. Kofi reportedthat management forced many workers involvedin accidents to hide their injuries to improve thesafety record and to ensure that they would havework in the following months. “Workers who are

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in accidents are told not to speak about where wegot our injuries when we are sent to the hospital.One guy was working on a stamping job when thehammer hit him hard on the ankle. He didn’t tellanyone, but it was a bad injury, and soon he wentto a hospital outside the company. I told his bossabout what had happened. The next day his bosstold me not to say anything about it to anyone.”

In an interview with Satoshi Kamata that Iconducted after leaving Nizumi, we discussed hisjob as a Toyota seasonal worker. He told me, “Allworkers, whether they were seasonal, contract, orfull time employees, would hide their injuries forfear of embarrassing the hancho, the boss respon-sible for safety.” As an American, I was surprisedthat the fear of embarrassing somebody else wouldkeep them silent about their injuries and the dan-gers they constantly faced. Every line worker Ispoke to said the factory was abunai—dangerous. Iasked Higuchi about it. When he first entered thecompany, he had to work on the line for six longmonths, and he concurred. My colleague Shiinaagreed that the factory was dangerous, but hepointed out that the workers have danger aware-ness training. “It’s a process where workers learnfrom example. They are shown pictures and toldof the accident results. It’s a good idea, but man-agers don’t implement it. Either they’re too busyor they simply don’t care anymore, so accidents atthe factory are going up.”

Working Conditions in Keiretsu Companies.According to the Japanese Ministry of Labor,small companies in Japan are especially dangerous.Statistics show that in the transportation industry,companies of 30 to 99 employees have more thanfour times the accident rate of companies whichemploy 8,000 people or more. (Japanese Ministryof Labor 1997). Working conditions were not onlybad at Toyota, but also other, smaller Toyotakeiretsu businesses. I met one Iranian who hadworked for a small Toyota keiretsu business em-ploying only 15 workers. In Japan, more than 57percent of all companies have 30 workers or less,and more than 73 percent have one hundredworkers or less (Japanese Ministry of Labor 1997).The Toyota group has been able to increase itprofits by outsourcing manufacturing to smallgroup-related companies. These companies are ex-

pected to serve the parent company by supplyingwork or parts only to keiretsu-group related com-panies.

“The Japanese people at the company are notbad to me, and some of them are very kind. Themain problems are the working conditions and theworking hours. It is so dangerous, and if I slack offsome days because I am tired, my boss will getangry with me. Sometimes I must work a 24- to36-hour shift when he needs me. I am always,always tired.” I was shocked to hear that anyonewould be forced to work for so long.

“It’s tough,” he said. “There are times when aworker just walks off the job. That usually occursduring the eighteenth hour—that’s the time whenthe body begins to give out.” His boss showedlittle sympathy. “My boss benefits from my hardwork because I am a good worker and strongerthan most Japanese who work on the floor. But hedoes little to protect me, and he provides littlesafety equipment.” It was obvious that the workersat the small companies were the grunts of theJapanese auto industry, sweating away at jobs thatare the most dangerous and least secure.

4.Management throughSocial Control:TheHighlyControlled SocialOrder

In their interpretations of management styles atToyota and kereitsu companies and in the scenesof order and organization they witness, manyWestern observers miss the underlying culturalcurrents and unspoken rules that govern the Jap-anese workplace. This lack of cultural relevanceoften causes critical details to be missed in assess-ing how work is accomplished, as well as howworklife for the average employee, white collar orblue collar, is characterized.

For example, one of the most striking aspects ofbeing at Nizumi was not my actual job but thework environment. There was a total lack of pri-vacy. Since every section was entirely open, therewas not one place in the whole office that couldnot be seen by all members of the section. Alldesks were arranged in blocks of four and they allfaced inward. The managers’ desks were locatedon the outer edge of each section making a largerectangle that surrounded the inner blocks. Eachmanager’s desk also faced inward towards the low-


er-ranked workers. The resulting formation meantthat everyone could see what each other was do-ing, and in many cases, what they were reading aswell.

However, I came to learn that the desks wereorganized according to an additional principle,one that I would not have known upon a firstglance of the scheme. A colleague explained tome that there was a “power group” seated at thecenter of each section. He pointed his finger tothe power group and said, “Those guys will bemoving up in the company. That is why they sit inthe center of the section. But I sit on the outside.”It was true: his desk was located toward the outeredge of the section. Those who had the powerwere located toward the center of the section,close to the section leader, and those who wereleast important were seated at the edge. So it wasclear to all who was an inside member of theold-boy network and could expect to move up andbecome a future leader and who was an outsiderdestined to remain on the periphery of power.Everyone was well aware of the geography of thedesks and what it denoted. My impression of theoffice space symbolizing egalitarianism had to berevised. The lack of walls certainly facilitatedcommunication, particularly during technical dis-cussions, but it also demonstrated distinctions ofrank and facilitated worker control.

Japanese society is also one governed by for-mality and unspoken rules that, if broken, lead tocriticism, harassment, and even ostracizing theoffender. Rules at Nizumi govern parking, bath-room behavior, overtime, and every human andbusiness activity imaginable. What I found mostinteresting about these rules was that they werephrased in the language of morality: justice andinjustice; good and bad. An employee who usesthe parking lot without permission commits “aninjustice to the company. From now on if there isa person who does this, we will severely punishthat person, so please obey the rules on this doc-ument (do not be a bad member of the com-pany).”

Breaking these rules impacted a worker’s ca-reer. My colleague told me a personal story aboutwhat had happened when he broke a cardinal rule.Upon returning home from his stay in America,

he was eager to publish his research results in anengineering journal. First, he approached his oldboss and asked him about submitting a paper forpublication. He was told it was a good idea. Thenhe asked his current boss. But when the currentboss discovered he had gone to his former bossfirst, his current boss angrily rejected his request.The result was that, after many years of hard work,my colleague never received the opportunity topublish his paper, which might have contributedto a substantial promotion. He said that afterliving in America, he had forgotten this importantcompany rule, a rule that mandated one mustalways report to one’s direct superior before ap-proaching anyone else. By making an example ofmy colleague, his current boss was telling all of theemployees in the section to obey the rules, writtenand unwritten.

As an American socially conditioned to valueprivacy, I was uncomfortable with the lack ofwalls, but what made me even more anxious wasthe way I was constantly being monitored by mycolleagues. It was common practice for employeesto look over the shoulders of their colleagues andto poke their noses into their computers or per-sonal documents. Members of the section com-monly opened each others’ desk drawers and readeach other’s notes, letters, and papers. Nothingwas private. My mild-mannered boss Higuchiwould routinely approach me from behind andstick his face directly into my work to see what Iwas doing. This was standard management prac-tice.

The Power Group, Intimidation, and Bully-ing. In Japanese society, there is no real equality:either someone is above you or they are below you(Nakane 1970). Chie Nakane makes an insightfulobservation about the nature of the relationshipbetween two individuals in a senior and subordi-nate position in Japanese society. Often referredto as the oyabun-kobun relationship, the oyabun isthe employee who obtains the status of parent andkobun of that as the child. “The essential elementsin the relationship are that the kobun receivesbenefits or help from his oyabun, such as assistancein securing employment or promotion, and advicein the occasion of important decision making”(Nakane 1970). The relationship is one that de-

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velops over many years. Within the context ofwork, the kobun also functioned as an oyabun to asubordinate whom he can “trust” establishing aline of hierarchy. Subordinates adopt a shared wayof behaving, thinking (kangaekata), and evendressing to increase the bond with his superior.

These dynamics are manifested in the Japaneseworkplace as another set of unspoken rules regard-ing social interaction, ranking, and bullying bythe group in power for those who fall outside ofthe norm or who are not performing at a certainlevel. After I had been at Nizumi a while, I no-ticed the existence of a tightly-knit group thatseemed to be a power center. What I found par-ticularly upsetting about this group was the meth-ods they used to establish discipline. Harassment,or what in Japan is referred to as bullying (ijime),was routine, and some unfortunate individualswere bullied on a daily basis.

Ienaga, a colleage, was assigned to work withthis power group, and he initially seemed wellacclimated. Although he had a quiet, introvertedpersonality, he would often joke and laugh whenthe others made suggestions or comments abouthis work. As the weeks passed, however, thesesuggestions became pointed, and the criticism wasmore like harassment. Ienaga became nervous andwithdrawn, keeping his head down as he sat at hisdesk. When, at a drinking party Ienaga ordered amixed drink, his superior saw that it came with abright red cherry, he growled that Ienaga shouldbe drinking beer. At times, when Ienaga was askeda question during department meetings, heseemed shaken. He would stutter, and his facewould turn bright red as he answered in a haltingmanner. It was obvious that Ienaga had the wrongkokoro for the group. A person’s kokoro, how onefeels and thinks, was highly important in devel-oping long term relationships with co-workers.

One member of the power group, whom I nick-named Scarface, was a senior engineer at thecompany and good friends with Uno, the SectionManager. This relationship gave him free licenseto bully anyone in the section. He would abruptlyapproach an employee from behind, commandeerhis chair, then harass him about his work, readingsome of his data out loud and asking tough ques-tions. When the employee responded, Scarface

would yell, “So why is that? What do you mean?Why didn’t you use this procedure?” Some engi-neers maintained their composure, but others stut-tered and their faces turned bright red. Theseincidents always occurred when other members ofthe group were present, as Scarface’s goal was topublicly humiliate his target. When Scarfacewalked into our section with wrathful gaze, theatmosphere became tense. Everybody feared him,and he relished this.

I was not spared his attentions. I hated when hepoked his eyes into my personal belongings, but Ianswered his questions as accurately as I could andwithout fear. Indeed, I would almost chuckle in-side. Being a foreigner, I had not been conditionedto react to public humiliation the same way as myJapanese colleagues, so instead of being frighten-ing, the situation for me was strangely comic.

The engineers were also harassed and humili-ated during Friday technical meetings. I was toldthat the meetings were held so that the engineerscould share their results with the group. Each of uswould make a presentation and the others wouldask questions. I thought that this was an excellentway for us to learn about each other’s research.However, I quickly learned otherwise. The pre-sentations were followed by marginal discussionsat best, and I saw that these meetings were merelyopportunities for Uno and his close subordinatesto receive a report from each group and exertcontrol. Week after week, our meetings followedthe same pattern—a young engineer would makea presentation, then Uno and his close subordi-nates would mock his mistakes in the hopes ofshaming him to become a better engineer. It wasvery Japanese to use embarrassment as a manage-ment tool. What should have been amiable con-versation about technical issues always became apersonal assault.

I sometimes wondered why I myself was neverbullied at one of Uno’s meetings. I finally learnedthat it was all related to the hierarchy and toUno’s insecurity about being younger than most ofthe managers one level below him. Most of themhad once been his superiors, so to exert his presentauthority, now he mocked their underlings. Butmy boss, Higuchi, was younger than Uno andtherefore posed no threat, so I was not harassed.


However, one engineer, Hiraga, did pose athreat. Once when he had just returned from aconference in America, he reported upon what hehad seen of the latest technology. During hispresentation, he seemed a bit confused aboutwhich technique had enhanced which vehicle.Uno interrupted Hiraga’s presentation to pointthis out, and they argued back and forth. Hiragastood his ground and rebutted whatever Uno said.Back and forth it went without cease. I wasamazed at how long the argument lasted—I timedit at exactly one hour. It surprised me to see ajunior manager arguing heatedly with his boss,and I wondered whether it would aid or hurtHiraga’s position at Nizumi.

When the meeting came to a close and I re-turned to my desk, I turned to another colleaguefor some answers about why Uno behaved the wayhe did. He paused for a moment and said “forcontrol.”

“For control?” I asked.“You see,” he said while lowering his voice as to

not be heard by others, “Uno is the youngestmanager in his position at the company and all ofthe other managers in the section, except forHiguchi, were his superiors when he entered thecompany. Since he is younger the other managersdo not listen to him so he bullies them to try andforce them to do what he says.” I was amazed atwhat he had said. He also mentioned that thereason I did not get bullied was that Higuchi wasmuch younger than Uno and so I did not pose athreat to his position. After all of these months Ifinally realized what the bullying was all about.

Conclusion

From one perspective, my more critical assess-ment of working conditions, cultural norms,and management practices at Toyota and kere-

itsu businesses could be said to be culturally bi-ased—that a foreigner’s, much less an American’s,analysis of the impact of another culture on man-agement styles and workplace rules should notmake judgments or be critical. In my assessment Idid try to be as balanced as possible, but I willexpress disagreement with the unquestioned,glowing accounts of a system with real, measurableflaws. The real cost of this system can be clearly

and empirically seen in its adverse impact onemployees—the human cost—that extends be-yond cultural relativism.

Others have begun to notice. In recent years,several books have been written about the Jap-anese workplace, and some—particularly thosewritten about transplants in American and Eu-rope— have finally reported accurately aboutthe Toyota Production System. Ironically, thebook that gets it best is still Japan in the PassingLane—written over 30 years ago and by a Jap-anese citizen, Kamata Satoshi. Kamata workedat Toyota for six months as a temporary workerand covertly documented his work experience.One of the many accidents that he documentedwas that of a worker who suffered a severeconcussion when his had touched an electriccord that was frayed. Kamata talks about anewsletter he received that discussed lengthen-ing the workday. The workers were despondent.“They take it for granted that it will be decidedby the top and sent down. Then again, many ofthem are thinking that whatever happens, itwon’t make a difference.”

What has changed at Toyota over the last threedecades? Not much. I experienced the same unsafework environment, the same oppressive mecha-nisms of worker control, the same power manip-ulations that Kamata chronicled. He described thesame tatemae/hone disconnect that was pervasivein my experience.

What will change over the next 30 years? I fearthat little will happen. There are some who con-tinue to accept the tatemae without understand-ing the honne it belies. Toyota was recentlylauded for the reduced design time in productionof the Prius. But never is the impact on the healthand safety of engineers mentioned. Like I was, Isuspect engineers and production employees weresimply pressed, intimidated, and overloaded to getthe job done.

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the darker side of lean

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