I was lucky enough to be invited to Japan a couple of weeks ago by Apex Digital Graphics to witness the worldwide launch of Ryobi’s venture into the B1 market, the 1050 press.
Plenty will be written, I’m sure, about that machine both in PrintWeek’s pages and elsewhere in the run-up to Drupa. But today I want to share some impressions about Ryobi’s press manufacturing set-up.
For one thing, there is a timing device which measures how long it takes workers to walk 10 metres – 6 seconds is the aim. Our guide around the factory told the gathered print industry journalists and potential customers that this was designed to keep employees’ pace up as they walked around the site – a novel concept, and it seemed to work. I wonder what the unions would say about it in this country?
Second was the precision of the line manufacturing the press units. Each unit is built in seven separate stages, with one or two people responsible for each stage of the process. Each stage takes a maximum of 75 minutes – a prominent clock counts down how much time is left before the unit will be picked up and moved on. There is little room for error on the part of the workers; but, apparently without fail, a unit rolls off the production every one and a quarter hours.
But most striking of all was the absolute cleanliness of the factory – you could, to use an awful cliché, eat your dinner off the floor. I have only visited one other press manufacturing plant, which was somewhat more cluttered, and I suspect that few are as spotless as Ryobi’s. What I can say is that very few printers I have visited have been as meticulously clean as Ryobi’s factory.
I’m not saying that Ryobi’s press is better than any others in the market because of its clean factory. But I do think that attention to detail on the factory floor and the sort of clearly defined workflows that Ryobi’s plant exemplifies can only be good for business.
A workplace where everyone has clearly defined goals and takes real pride in their job and working environment is, I believe, indicative of a well-run company. And that, as we all know, means a healthy bottom line.