4 日本の自動車・電気機器産業における職場の分業構造(テーマ別分科会7=異常・変化への対応-スウェーデンと比較した日本の製造職場の分業構造,II テーマ別分科会=報告論文と座長報告)

抄録

This paper discusses the characteristics of the division of labor on assembly shop floors in Japanese automobile and electrical/electronic equipment industries using international comparisons. Our hypothesis is that assembly work is comprised of standardized operations (repetitive routine tasks) and non-standardized operations (dealing with changes and problems, improvement activities, preparing standard operation sheets, suggestions for the development of new products, and so on). As standardized operations become more functionally complete and include the entire work process, assembly workers will take charge of more non-standardized operations. To prove this hypothesis, we analyzed the characteristics of the division of labor on three assembly shop floors: the parallel product flow system of Volvo Uddevalla plant, the complete processes of Toyota's assembly shops, and the cell production system of the "N" Company that produces computer peripheral devices. As a result, we reached the following temporary conclusions. Firstly, the characteristics of the division of labor in the above three cases is to restrain excessive fragmentation of standardized operations, which was characteristic of the prototype Ford and Toyota production systems before introduction of the complete process, i.e., to recover the functional completeness and wholeness of the process. Secondly, there is a great difference in the degree that the standardized operation recovers the functional completeness and wholeness. The difference varies according to the length of cycle time of the standardized operation, and reveals two types of divisions in the non-standardized operation. One type occurs if separate workers take charge of the standardized operation and the non-standardized operation, respectively, when the standardized operation of one assembly worker or one work group is part of assembling the whole product and is performed in a very short cycle time. The other type is if an assembly worker or work group takes charge of the more non-standardized operation when the standardized operation of one assembly worker or one work group is assembling the whole product, and is performed in a long cycle time.