5 ms·

I worked for a connector company in Japan (JST) for my co-op during undergrad, and continued to work for them in Michigan for a couple of years. Without listeni

by boyaka 11y ago

I worked for a connector company in Japan (JST) for my co-op during undergrad, and continued to work for them in Michigan for a couple of years. Without listening to the podcast, I can already say that the attention to detail and quality in Japan is incredible. American connector companies no doubt perform the same testing, but in Japan each employee has a very specific focus and will work relentlessly on that. They also have a large pool of contract workers to perform these tedious tasks, and sadly their job stability is not fantastic... In my 6 months there I went to at least 4 goodbye parties for laid off contract workers. On top of that, working 8am ~ 6 or 7pm minimum is the norm. While I was there I was the only one that would leave at 5pm (I was forced to) while everybody else would take a 30 minute lunch-like break then get back to work, sometimes until 11pm. Although, they at least would mostly all leave on Friday after a 30 minute clean-up period at 5pm. American employees tend to have wider responsibilities and probably wouldn't be able to handle the relentless dedication to detail that is expected of Japanese employees. Even though my office in Michigan was the same company and had access to the same parts as Japan to sell to American car companies, our work force just did not compare to Japan in its devout dedication to the customer and making sure that parts are perfect in every detail, down to plastic packaging and boxing that they are shipped out with.

hotaru29 11y ago
> our work force just did not compare to Japan in its devout dedication to the customer and making sure that parts That is true. But a big problem with Japanese companies is the insider/outsider mentality. Japanese employees are loyal to their boss and their company before any other person. These “other people” include the general public (and their safety) and the actual stockholders of the companies. If something goes wrong, everyone in the company will hide it. Whistleblowing is completely against Japanese culture and obedience to authority. This mentality showed itself in numerous cases, most recently with Takata airbags (employees know about the problem but covered it up). Japanese cosmetics giant Kanebo had a product that caused permanent blemishes on the face. Even after the company was well aware of the problem, they covered it up. Other examples include the Toshiba and Olympus scandals. Japanese quality is good, but I would never trust Japanese products in any safety related thing (such as pharmaceuticals). PS: IMHO, Japanese universities are mediocre. Japanese corporate success is mostly due to the exploitation of their employees. /rant
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  I've heard the tough thing is getting into the universities. once you're in supposedly the challenge is a bit lighter. Just what I heard. never attended.
  - hotaru29 11y ago
    Sorry, I brought up another topic :) In Japan there are two types of universities: national universities (such as University of Tokyo/University of Kyoto) and many private universities. For Bachelor students, getting into national universities (especially prestigious ones) are extremely difficult. But when someone successfully entered a university, no special effort is needed to graduate. Passing is the norm, even with minimum effort on the part of the student. The first three years are spent mostly on club activities. The last year-and-a-half is spend on job search. After someone secured a job, they have very little incentive to work for the remainder of their stay. So, it is basically a question of doing as little as possible and holding out until the job starts. There are perhaps 3 or 4 good private universities (Keio, Waseda, etc...). (They are actually fairly mediocre by international standards, but many in Japan think they are great. ()) The rest of the private universities are absolute garbage. The majority of people will go to this type of university. Many of these were upgraded "colleges" for women who had ambitions to become housewives, but have not yet found suitable husbands. Especially with the falling number of students, these universities will accept literally anyone. In these universities it is also extremely easy to graduate, so any degree from them is essentially worthless. A big problem with these universities is truancy (e.g., http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7716805 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7716805). These places are very similar to bad high schools (in the way classes are given and students are treated). () Many in Japan think that Waseda is one of the best elite universities in Japan and well regarded world wide. Yet, international rankings shows that it is lower-ranked than the University of Belgrade, Beihang University, and Federal University of Minas Gerais. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html
    - ectoplasm 11y ago
      It's really frustrating going to grad school in Japan if you did your undergrad at a good school the West.
pkaye 11y ago
I worked for a company that build specialty chips with firmware. We would deal with companies all around the world who used our chips in their products. By far, the Japanese companies would do the most through qualifications of our chips. They would build special test system, inject errors, reverse engineer, and bring up detailed questions and concerns that we even didn't have the manpower to achieve. And when they were satisfied with the response, the purchase would go through.
- boyaka 11y ago
  Very interesting perspective. During my internship I was mainly focused on our testing and had pretty basic tasks, although I was moved around a lot to shadow different employees so I was able to learn about the entire spectrum of preparation, testing, and examination of parts that took place. The employees actually creating and modifying the design of the parts had much more responsibility (these were mainly the full time engineers), and although they still got their hands dirty in the lab with us, I did get a glimpse of their interactions with customers through morning meetings when they had to describe how their meetings went and how they dressed up in fancy clothes and spent entire days away to visit with them. My Japanese was not nearly good enough to begin working on designs or with customers, although some interns from my school were able to reach that level.
vacri 11y ago
I used to work in a medical equipment company, which had a Japanese reseller doing our main product for Japan, which was a double-fist sized(ish) unit with an LCD. We'd ship them off, finished from manufacturing, then they'd have their own team that would quality check them again. I remember one of our service blokes opening up one of the returns-for-rework. They gave detailed reports and sticky-label arrows for faults, and sure enough, this rework unit had them as well for the fault - a small speck of dirt on the LCD. The tech touched the dirt with his finger and it fell off. Rework complete. They'd sent it back on principle, but it's a nice little story of the attention to detail and formality that they had. The actual model in question was actually 10 years and two major generations of hardware obsolete, but it was so difficult getting an item through the regulatory red tape, we didn't bother doing it with the newer gen hardware.
burger_moon 11y ago
>American employees tend to have wider responsibilities and probably wouldn't be able to handle the relentless dedication to detail that is expected of Japanese employees. Even though my office in Michigan was the same company and had access to the same parts as Japan to sell to American car companies, our work force just did not compare to Japan in its devout dedication to the customer and making sure that parts are perfect in every detail, down to plastic packaging and boxing that they are shipped out with. I worked for Toshiba and Mitsubishi in a manufacturing role and on several occasions worked with some Japanese workers they sent over. Our processes from theirs differed wildly. We worked on the same generators but to get to the end result were massively different approaches. It's hard to describe what made the Japanese workers different from us but their lifestyle, work ethic, and outlook were much different from us.

by boyaka 11y ago

hotaru29 11y ago

> our work force just did not compare to Japan in its devout dedication to the customer and making sure that parts That is true. But a big problem with Japanese companies is the insider/outsider mentality. Japanese employees are loyal to their boss and their company before any other person. These “other people” include the general public (and their safety) and the actual stockholders of the companies. If something goes wrong, everyone in the company will hide it. Whistleblowing is completely against Japanese culture and obedience to authority. This mentality showed itself in numerous cases, most recently with Takata airbags (employees know about the problem but covered it up). Japanese cosmetics giant Kanebo had a product that caused permanent blemishes on the face. Even after the company was well aware of the problem, they covered it up. Other examples include the Toshiba and Olympus scandals. Japanese quality is good, but I would never trust Japanese products in any safety related thing (such as pharmaceuticals). PS: IMHO, Japanese universities are mediocre. Japanese corporate success is mostly due to the exploitation of their employees. /rant

michaelbuddy 11y ago
I've heard the tough thing is getting into the universities. once you're in supposedly the challenge is a bit lighter. Just what I heard. never attended.
- hotaru29 11y ago
  Sorry, I brought up another topic :) In Japan there are two types of universities: national universities (such as University of Tokyo/University of Kyoto) and many private universities. For Bachelor students, getting into national universities (especially prestigious ones) are extremely difficult. But when someone successfully entered a university, no special effort is needed to graduate. Passing is the norm, even with minimum effort on the part of the student. The first three years are spent mostly on club activities. The last year-and-a-half is spend on job search. After someone secured a job, they have very little incentive to work for the remainder of their stay. So, it is basically a question of doing as little as possible and holding out until the job starts. There are perhaps 3 or 4 good private universities (Keio, Waseda, etc...). (They are actually fairly mediocre by international standards, but many in Japan think they are great. ()) The rest of the private universities are absolute garbage. The majority of people will go to this type of university. Many of these were upgraded "colleges" for women who had ambitions to become housewives, but have not yet found suitable husbands. Especially with the falling number of students, these universities will accept literally anyone. In these universities it is also extremely easy to graduate, so any degree from them is essentially worthless. A big problem with these universities is truancy (e.g., http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7716805 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7716805). These places are very similar to bad high schools (in the way classes are given and students are treated). () Many in Japan think that Waseda is one of the best elite universities in Japan and well regarded world wide. Yet, international rankings shows that it is lower-ranked than the University of Belgrade, Beihang University, and Federal University of Minas Gerais. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html
  - ectoplasm 11y ago
    It's really frustrating going to grad school in Japan if you did your undergrad at a good school the West.

pkaye 11y ago

I worked for a company that build specialty chips with firmware. We would deal with companies all around the world who used our chips in their products. By far, the Japanese companies would do the most through qualifications of our chips. They would build special test system, inject errors, reverse engineer, and bring up detailed questions and concerns that we even didn't have the manpower to achieve. And when they were satisfied with the response, the purchase would go through.

boyaka 11y ago
Very interesting perspective. During my internship I was mainly focused on our testing and had pretty basic tasks, although I was moved around a lot to shadow different employees so I was able to learn about the entire spectrum of preparation, testing, and examination of parts that took place. The employees actually creating and modifying the design of the parts had much more responsibility (these were mainly the full time engineers), and although they still got their hands dirty in the lab with us, I did get a glimpse of their interactions with customers through morning meetings when they had to describe how their meetings went and how they dressed up in fancy clothes and spent entire days away to visit with them. My Japanese was not nearly good enough to begin working on designs or with customers, although some interns from my school were able to reach that level.

vacri 11y ago

I used to work in a medical equipment company, which had a Japanese reseller doing our main product for Japan, which was a double-fist sized(ish) unit with an LCD. We'd ship them off, finished from manufacturing, then they'd have their own team that would quality check them again. I remember one of our service blokes opening up one of the returns-for-rework. They gave detailed reports and sticky-label arrows for faults, and sure enough, this rework unit had them as well for the fault - a small speck of dirt on the LCD. The tech touched the dirt with his finger and it fell off. Rework complete. They'd sent it back on principle, but it's a nice little story of the attention to detail and formality that they had. The actual model in question was actually 10 years and two major generations of hardware obsolete, but it was so difficult getting an item through the regulatory red tape, we didn't bother doing it with the newer gen hardware.

burger_moon 11y ago

>American employees tend to have wider responsibilities and probably wouldn't be able to handle the relentless dedication to detail that is expected of Japanese employees. Even though my office in Michigan was the same company and had access to the same parts as Japan to sell to American car companies, our work force just did not compare to Japan in its devout dedication to the customer and making sure that parts are perfect in every detail, down to plastic packaging and boxing that they are shipped out with. I worked for Toshiba and Mitsubishi in a manufacturing role and on several occasions worked with some Japanese workers they sent over. Our processes from theirs differed wildly. We worked on the same generators but to get to the end result were massively different approaches. It's hard to describe what made the Japanese workers different from us but their lifestyle, work ethic, and outlook were much different from us.