January 2010
23 posts
Questions Grow on Japanese Manufacturing Quality
JANUARY 29, 2010
TOKYO—Toyota Motor Corp.’s massive recall comes at a time when Japanese manufacturers across the board, known for their attention to detail and craftsmanship, are facing a sharp spike in customer complaints, accident reports and product recalls at home.
The number of incidents rose dramatically after the introduction of a new law in 2007 requiring Japanese companies for...
Seeing Light Through the Gloom in Davos
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
Seeing Light Through the Gloom in Davos By Michael Elliott and Michael Schuman
In late January, the Graubunden, Switzerland’s most easterly canton, is not where you go to see signs of spring. In its high valleys, along whose paths armies trudged from the lowlands of Italy to the German heartland during the Thirty Years’ War, snow lies thick on the ground. Off...
Japan as Number Three
KOJIMA Akira, in Japan Echo Dec.2009
The recent global financial and economic crisis, which had its epicenter in the United States, saw China assume a central role in the coordination of global economic policy. To overcome this “once in a century” crisis, the first-ever summit of the Group of Twenty was convened last fall in Washington, bringing together the leaders of the Group of...
QFD and Kansei Engineering: Can they be...
Source : TheManufacturer.com Published : 24 Nov 2008 15:51
Following a question from one of our readers Rob Thompson explores the compatibility of QFD and Kansei Engineering…
In Japan, Kansei Engineering is often considered as an independent product development philosophy, which typically is carried out in concurrent engineering processes. However, since the methodology is...
“Can Kansei help new products?
Packaging Magazine
| April 10, 2003 |
NEW...”
– Article: Can Kansei help new products? | AccessMyLibrary - Promoting library advocacy
“Chunghwa Telecom and seven other telecos to build Asia Pacific submarine cable...”
– Chunghwa Telecom and seven other telecos to build Asia Pacific submarine cable system
“Japan to account for more than 50% of Asian LTE subscriber base by 2015, says...”
– Japan to account for more than 50% of Asian LTE subscriber base by 2015, says Informa Telecoms and Media
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 4
Everything is constantly searching for balance within itself. The act of balancing is a process that attempts to restore harmony into every moment. Change creates imbalance in order to bring attention to those forces that effect us. The qualities of meaning (Kansei) and purpose (Chisei) nourish and support each other in our quest for harmony. This is a natural action that occurs between our...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 3
3. Results and Discussions There are five laws that govern design thinking. These laws are based upon the principle that reality should be described and perceived as a series of design (symbolic) events, situations and experiences we encounter both in our waking and sleeping states. The five laws that govern design thinking are: First, the fact that everything has two opposing aspects present in...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 2
2. Method Now is the time we need to re-examine our understanding and definition of the term “design”. The origin of the word stems from the Latin meaning “to mark or mark out”, which infers that design relates to the process of making signs and/or symbols. As we know, a design may also be described in the form of an artifact, which is the end result of a series of symbolic...
Japan’s Design Policy
Japan’s Design Policy
Since the 1950s, the Japanese government has recognized design’s potential as an economic engine. Legislators’ earliest efforts centered on encouraging originality amid the wave of copycat work that proliferated domes-tically after World War II. One such endeavor was the Good Design Award. Founded in 1957 to honor well-designed consumer goods, the program has since been...
Design Consciousness, Kansei and the Tao part 1
Kansei is an integral part of the phenomenon we’ve come to know and understand as design. Kansei is a term that attempts to describe a subjective event that remains open to interpretation, while simultaneously inferring certain qualities that are generally considered to be emotional in content. But for the most part, Kansei brings attention to only one aspect, or quality, of a multi-dimensional...
Will we bring back manufacturing or outsource...
Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 02:48PM
Innovation must be located near manufacturing because so much of innovation is learning from and improving manufacturing, according to GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt on this CNBC forum, The Future of “Made in the USA.” Others who understand the innovation process have made the same point. I think I first heard it about 30 years ago from Donald Firth after...
"Kao-Ya" Innovation and Chinese VAS Market –...
“Kao-Ya”, as they say it in Chinese, or “Peking Duck”, is a beautiful and delicious dish, a roasted duck with especially tender and crispy skin. The legends trace its history to the Qing Dynasty in China. To prepare “Kao-Ya” you need a full duck with its head attached. Then, if you are strong enough, you need to inflate it through a straw (that’s how they did it centuries ago) or use a pump to...
Challenging Mindsets: From Reverse Innovation to...
Views on innovation in developing economies are evolving rapidly, yet they still do not capture the full significance of what is going on. Executives in the West are still prisoners of a mindset that equates innovation with technology and product innovation. This blinds them to significant alternative forms of innovation that can profoundly disrupt their businesses in the years ahead.
Early view...
Asia and the elements of innovation
By Eric Drexler 6 August 2009
Asia has strengths that promise to make it a leading center of technological innovation in the 21st century. These strengths are substantial, fundamental, and durable. At their base lie aspects of culture, on both a civilizational and generational time scale. Human capital and the capacity for mobilization build on these cultural advantages.
The term “Asia” is of...
Vision 2020
For the first issue of the new decade, Nature asked a selection of leading researchers and policy-makers where their fields will be ten years from now. We invited them to identify the key questions their disciplines face, the major roadblocks and the pressing next steps.
Contributions include: Peter Norvig on search, David A. Relman on the microbiome, David B. Goldstein on personalized medicine,...
A Superfluous Touch
Denis Dutton is a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and author of “The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.”
While preparing attractive bento box lunches is an honorable and inventive craft, the traveling lunch box is not unique to Japan.
Lisa Poole/Associated Press Hopalong Cassidy lunch box.
Take a look at the history of the lunch...
Beauty in Fast Food
Nick Currie, a.k.a., Momus, has recorded 20 albums, written about culture for various publications and participated in The Whitney Biennial. He is the author of “The Book of Scotlands” and “The Book of Jokes,” both published this year. He lives in Berlin.
As a Scot who’s lived in the U.S., Europe and Japan, I’m convinced that Japan is far ahead when it comes to the aesthetics of everyday life. Of...
Doing More With Less
John Maeda is the president of the Rhode Island School of Design and author of “The Laws of Simplicity.”
I would say that Japanese culture is particularly attuned to the appreciation of beauty because it springs from an island nation with limited natural resources. Japan has always had to get by with less wood, metal, fuel and so on, so its culture has evolved around how to make less into...
Kenya Hara On Japanese Aesthetics
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
What makes Japanese design so special? Basically, it’s a matter of simplicity; a particular notion of simplicity, different from what simplicity means in the West. So are things in general better designed in Japan? Well, actually, it’s not that simple…
The New York Times asked us to get them in touch with Kenya Hara, creative director of MUJI and professor at the...
How Japanese Culture influences their Designs
I stumbled over a really interesting interview of Kenya Hara by Oliver Reichenstein from iA or information architects. This interview was part of a New York Times feature on a new fad in the US, making Japanese Bento boxes. Kenya explains that Japanese culture has a craftsman inspired sense of aesthetic that is so focused that they miss the impact of the bigger picture.
The craftman’s spirit, I...
Made in Japan - The culture behind the brand
Historically, in a simpler time before the jet age, Japan was geographically isolated, surrounded by treacherous seas and formidable fault lines. Mountains cover three-quarters of Japan. Earthquakes and challenging terrain are constant reminders of nature’s strength and have contributed to the importance Japanese people place on having a dependable, manageable social system. Japanese people value...