Niigata Era 7. Mobile Phone Vibrators (2)
Around 2003, our company achieved stable production through improvements in manufacturing technology for mobile phone vibrators, just in time for the mobile phone boom. As production volume expanded, we gradually added more press machines, eventually increasing the total to eight.
Vibrators are made by pressing tungsten alloy powder into shape, performing pre-sintering, and finally main-sintering in a high-temperature furnace to create the product. When placing them into the high-temperature furnace, they are arranged on molybdenum plates. However, because molybdenum plates are expensive, they must be reused repeatedly, and they become warped after being exposed to high temperatures many times. Arranging thousands of semi-finished products at appropriate intervals on warped plates had to be done by hand. As production volume increased, we expanded our part-time staff to about 20 people, but even that was not enough, so office executives and staff would take turns coming in on weekends to do the arranging work.
Wondering if we could somehow save labor, I consulted with Mr. C, a field-based employee in charge of equipment maintenance. Mr. C had extensive experience with equipment and, being from the field, understood the movements and psychology of the workers well. I shared my thoughts with him and discussed whether there was a more efficient way to perform the vibrator arranging work and, if so, what we would need to prepare. He told me to wait a little while as he would try to build a tool.
About a month later, he told me it was ready, so I went to the arranging site and found a device that looked the part, using a conveyor belt and air cylinders. He explained how to use it to the part-time workers in charge of arranging, and when they used the tool to perform the work, the task that had previously taken 20 people about 20 minutes was finished by two people in 10 minutes. It was a simple tool that cost a little over 1 million yen, but it was well-thought-out and a surprisingly huge success.
Our company's weights were supplied to manufacturers of vibration motors, and we achieved a near-monopoly domestically, with our vibrators being used in 30% of the world's mobile phones. The company suddenly became a highly profitable enterprise and was even featured in a monthly magazine in the Niigata region (top image). However, since it is the standard pattern for a prized product to eventually be replaced by Chinese imitation products, we had to develop our next main product. This is the fate of the Japanese parts manufacturing industry.
Our company's largest customer was a Japanese motor manufacturer, Company M, which built a factory in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and we were sending our vibrators there as well. Company M invited us to see the factory, so the managing director and I went on a business trip to Thailand. The president of Company M also came and treated us to golf... it was a situation where it was unclear who was the customer. In Chiang Mai golf, a female caddy accompanies each player, providing attentive service and total luxury. However, the Korean group playing ahead of us had other women accompanying them in addition to their caddies. When I asked our caddy (in English) who those women were, she seemed hesitant to answer, but essentially, it seemed they were women who would accompany them throughout their entire stay in Chiang Mai (24 hours a day?).