Mr. Tanaka, principal of a juku (an after-school institution that provides tutoring for Japanese students) called Tanaka-juku teaches a philosophy called kanban katsuyo, which he learned from the late Taeichi Ono. Upon hearing of this philosophy, the president of Hashida Giken, Mr. Hashida adopted the kanban katsuyo way of thinking and incorporated it into the management of the company in 1999.

The basis of the teaching is to change the workers' understanding of safety, quality, and cost. Even by teaching technique and procedure, workers who don't have problem awareness will not be able to create results. In addition, if workers' are unaware of the problems around them there is no hope for these problems to be resolved; no hope for them to improve themselves and their work. Pursuit of continual improvement and problem awareness should be the top priority, whereas procedure and technique, while important, should be second (Tanaka).

Once a week we hold a brief seminar emphasizing improvement in safety, quality, and cost.

As shown in the diagram below, increasing problem awareness in the workplace and avoiding unnecessary loss will surely create a more relaxed and efficient work environment. This is what we strive for at Hashida Giken.

Our aim is to keep up the critical mind and find out the loss items(waste, unreasonable, irregular) and remove them (self-improvement) and make the environment to work easily and increase the efficiency.

Changing the workers' understanding of safety, quality, and cost

Find the potential loss in the workplace.

Eliminate loss on a one-on-one basis

Create a work environment that is easy to work in, while at the same time increasing production.