Fascinating trip to Nagoya, in Central Japan, this week to see three major Japanese investors in the UK.
First, Yamazaki Mazak, the largest machine tools manufacturer in the world. Ninety years old this year. Its first product in 1919 was a machine for making Japanese tatami matting. Now the showroom gleams with the widest imaginable range of products made with their machine tools - everything from artificial hips to aero engine turbine blades. Yamazaki have had a factory in Worcester since 1987, employing 500 people - it's won the Queen's Award twice, and will be opening its European Technology Centre in Worcester in November.
Then Denso, part of the Toyota Motor group, and the world's top-ranked manufacturer of car electronic and electrical parts, which employs around 2000 people at three sites in the West Midlands, centred on Telford. The company supports a supply chain in the UK with more than 150 suppliers. We spend a long time looking at the incredibly detailed and meticulous "hands-on learning" and technical skills training approach - the company has had over 100 Gold Laureates at the international Skills Olympics over the past 30 years. But then, as someone says to us, if you're going to employ someone for 40 years, it's worth investing three years in training them so that they can operate at the highest possible skills level required. I watch one of the production lines - 100 tiny, automated processes to make the motor that operates the needle in the speedo dial on your dashboard. Around 3 million of these are made every month.
And finally, a tour round the Toyota factory at Tsutsumi, to see the Prius rolling off the production line. 6000 people and 1000 robots work at Tsutsumi. There is something deeply impressive in watching six robots at a time delicately welding each car body as they slowly process down the line - a sort of beautiful mechanical ballet. Everywhere I look, the theme is environmental. Half the power needed for the final assembly plant at Tsutsumi comes from solar panels on the roof. [view photos on our flickr]
It's a cliche, and also wrong, to say that "manufacturing is dead". Some of the older people I talk to on this trip lament that the younger generation don't have the same attachment to making things that they did. But the impression I come away with is of cutting-edge processes and the highest standards of quality control. And Japanese industrial strengths have helped enormously to strengthen the British industrial base in recent years keeping us as the world's 6th largest manufacturing nation. The big news of the summer for us was Toyota's decision to put hybrid production into its Derbyshire plant, and Nissan's to make electric car batteries in Sunderland. Helping to make these relationships is very exciting and satisfying work.
Posted at 16:05 04 September 2009 by David Warren | Comments[0]
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