Japanese Job Shop Report#3　Musashi Giken(2/2)

Repeated products are the best new products
Musashi Giken is good at machining difficult-to-cut materials for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
It covers a wide range of processes, from turning to milling.
President Kawano said “Hastelloy, one of the difficult-to-cut materials is not special.”
He pursues the basic skills and improves quality and delivery time.
Repeat order account for 70% of the total sales, but they cannot be designed or processed under the same machining conditions as much as possible.
With the motto of “repeat products are the best new products,” Musashi Giken will always challenge work with higher machining conditions.

Always explore the cause
Prior to President Kawano’s independence in 2013, he spent a lot of time to acquire the certification of environmental management system, learned about company management in the process, and created an internal management system.  He makes use of the experience.

The company was established with two others who worked together on machining in the previous workplace.
Musashi Giken was started with a conventional lathe and one machining center each.  Sales reached 80 million yen in the first year and 100 million yen in the second year.

Musashi Giken received much of orders, but it doesn’t have enough workers.
Now the number of workers reaches five. They are omitting any extra process and covering shortage of workers with wisdom such as shortening the time by focusing on reviewing machining conditions.
In addition, good and bad points are investigated for each machining, quality improvement and time reduction are considered, and a better machining method is pursued.
Moreover, President Kawano emphasizes that “management is more important than processing.”  Sharing order lists and schedules, each workers manage their own workload and delivery times.
All are managers.
President Kawano recognizes self-management ability is important, and considering the next stage of work.
Although not yet used, microelectronic microscopes have already been purchased. He is certain that it will be necessary someday.  He says “It’s not long for the inspection process become a business.”