The making of a kanna

Derek......Thanks for the video........I had this romantic vision of a one-man shop in which a well known blacksmith created a hand tool from start to finish.......yet, all the workers at each stage were very skilled at what they did......some very interesting machines are also shown.......my respect for the quality of these tools remains intact.

Okay, that was cool.  Especially the dual power-chisel, or whatever you would call that thing.

I just wonder on a bigger scale what the production looks like.  I’m sure some is due to video editing, but it seems like the crew producing the blades and irons does so much more quickly than the guy fine-tuning the plane body.  Can’t argue with results, though—that shaving was gorgeous.

Jason

Jason Roehl in Lafayette, IN wrote:

Okay, that was cool.  Especially the dual power-chisel, or whatever you would call that thing.

I just wonder on a bigger scale what the production looks like.  I’m sure some is due to video editing, but it seems like the crew producing the blades and irons does so much more quickly than the guy fine-tuning the plane body.  Can’t argue with results, though—that shaving was gorgeous.

Jason

Short version:
Japanese companies tend to focus on improving what they already have, while American companies tend to focus on doing more with less.

What a great video! After working for the US subsidiary of a Japanese company for four years, I've noticed that we strive to do more with less, while Japanese companies strive to improve what they already have.
For example, if there's a bottleneck in the fine-tuning of plane bodies, a US company might:

1. Fundamentally question whether it's necessary to fine-tune planes

2. Look for external resources to fine-tune planes and let them compete for the business

3. Evaluate if they're in the right business and if they should spend their resources on more profitable endeavors

A Japanese company, on the other hand, would reassign a few people from another part of the business and train them for as long as it takes for them to become expert plane fine-tuners. This is because Japanese employees stay with the same company for their entire careers and a company takes care of them. So Japanese companies have a workforce with high-level expertise in a variety of process steps. This makes them highly innovative in the operational aspects of the business, but less so in terms of fundamental innovation.

In other words, in the example of plane fine-tuning, Japanese companies are more likely to invest in their employees and develop their internal capabilities, while an American company would be more likely to outsource and look for external solutions.


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