Episode 17: The Air Piping That Wasn't Connected — 'The Unfunny Design Flaw of a Deficit-Ridden Factory Built by a Trading Company'

7 Ways to Turn a Town Paint Factory with a 50 Million Yen Deficit into a Profitable Business 17

Why did we, a trading company, take the reckless step of 'building a factory'? The origin of this was a 'Vision Committee' formed by young employees several years ago. Amidst calls for the obsolescence of trading companies, we aimed to have our own factory as a base for quality assurance and a hub for development. The ambition was high. However, we young employees were completely excluded from the project once it actually started.
It was led by a few executives who knew nothing about the actual site.
I remember visiting the completed factory for the first time and blurting out, '...Did you just repurpose an existing warehouse?' for which I was fiercely scolded.
That is how little the building resembled a 'factory'.
Next to the paint booth, which required a high level of cleanliness, there was a door leading directly outside, and for some reason, the heavy painting line was located on the second floor. The roof was just corrugated iron, making it sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter. When the static eliminator didn't work, we realized the floor coating was acting as an insulator, blocking the ground. On typhoon days, a 'waterfall' would flow into the machine room, but the executive in charge of construction would only yell that it was due to 'insufficient cleaning of the gutters.' Even after I climbed onto the roof to clean them, the leaks never stopped.
However, the most fatal issue was the 'air'.
For a paint factory, air is life. We had a 1.5-horsepower main compressor and a 1-horsepower sub-compressor, which should have been sufficient according to the specs. Yet, there were constant cries from the floor that 'the pressure is not enough'.
Suspecting an air leak, I spent a night alone listening closely to the piping hidden inside the walls, but there was no sound.
The mystery was solved when we conducted a thorough investigation of the piping during an equipment upgrade.
I was speechless at the sight before me.
The two compressors, main and sub, were not even 'connected' to each other in the first place.
Furthermore, the one connected to the painting line that consumed the most air was the smaller '1-horsepower' sub-machine.
The floor had been forced to fight with 1 horsepower of air, let alone 1.5. Many defects disappeared because we switched to low-pressure guns as part of another improvement, which reduced the required air to one-third and contributed to profitability, but this was the moment the true cause became clear.
The guilt of an organization that forced us to 'produce no defects' under such physically impossible conditions is heavy.

This 'piping design flaw' was exactly what symbolized the confusion of this factory and this company.