It was some years ago when Yamaha created an all-women assembly line for its Ray Z scooter at the Surajpur plant near Delhi. This was not the first case of gender parity being put in place and today this effort is gaining momentum across automotive facilities in the country.
This is a welcome transition especially when patriarchy was the norm not-so-long ago and continues to be prevalent in some parts of the country. Interestingly, even in Japan which is home to some of the biggest global brands both in automotive and beyond, women have been coming to the forefront only in recent times.
In the case of Yamaha, there is an interesting aside on how some parts of a woman’s body are taken into consideration when it comes to working on the shop floor. The company’s recent update on its website speaks of an employee, Kanoko Oishi, who works on an assembly line for outboard motor parts.
Through collaborating with other women leaders in her workspace, she has been “striving to improve their environment” through ergonomics that quantifies the loads placed on the body. 'After two years of working on improvements, we have been able to really expand the range of duties that women and older operators can handle,' says Oishi.
Measuring Loads
What formed the basis of the improvements made by Oishi and her colleagues was measuring the loads subjected to seven body parts that move when working on the line (the neck, shoulders, waist, knees, elbows, wrists, and fingers) and evaluating them on a scale of 1 to 10.
For example, when picking parts from a shelf, the load placed on the body is quantified. For instance, an elbow angle of 160° is 7, a neck angle of 35° is 7, and a wrist angle of 20° is 3. These values were closely examined and vetted, including the differences recorded between men and women operators when performing the same movements.
A total of 7,000 items were subject to evaluation for each line. In response to the issues that arose, detailed and well thought out improvements were implemented to facilitate easier reach by operators or opting for greater automation, such as altering shelf angles or rearranging jig placement. As a result, many women and seniors are now part of assembly processes that were previously only performed by men in the prime of their careers.
According to Yamaha, over the past few years, the globe-spanning pandemic and resulting disruption of supply chains has required production sites to adapt to drastic industry changes and constantly fluctuating situations. From that perspective, creating an environment where anyone can work effectively and complement each other's capabilities is also connected to enhancing greater adaptability of the workplace as a whole.
On the other hand, there are also women actively working to expand the scope of their roles through the company's internal programs. 'When I returned to work after my maternity leave, I was taken aback by how far digitalisation had come at my workplace,' says Ayumi Shima, who is now enrolled in an 'in-house study abroad' programme that has placed her in the Data Sensing Technology Development Group.
Rapid Changes
Until she left for maternity leave, Shima worked in the machining workshop of an engine parts factory, which is basically dominated by men due to requiring night shifts and some tasks requiring workers to lift heavy jigs and the like.
Such production sites are currently undergoing rapid changes to transform into smart factories. The in-house programme Shima and others are participating in has an enrollment period of two years and is an initiative to nurture future human resources that will play active roles in factories of the near future where automation and digital transformation (DX) is well underway.
“I am not much of a computer person, so I wondered at first if I would be the right fit, but I'm taking on the challenge of systems development relying on the support of everyone around me,' says Shima. As a result of her work, the processing of casting mould repair request forms, which had previously all been done by hand, was successfully digitalised with the system she developed and introduced.
'My strength is that, on the one hand, I have real experience working on the factory floor. If I can put IT skills and more digital-based approaches in my other hand, I think I can contribute to solving problems in the field as an 'ambidextrous' promoter of DX,' says Shima.
Real Experience
With her knowing the heat of the machining workshop, the smell of cutting oil, the fatigue that comes from working night shifts, and more, she is armed with real-world experience that can lead to unique solutions.
Similarly, as highlighted in the earlier part of this narrative, the Cygnus Ray launched in India in 2019 was done so under the vision of supporting the social advancement of women in line with the country's own economic development. The Cygnus Ray's assembly line was also run entirely by women.
Yamaha has stated that since its founding in 1955, women always got their pride of place in the workforce. Even though factories in Japan were by and large considered a man's domain, Yamaha made some creative alterations in tasks and processes in order to create positions for women as well.
In those days, it was rare to see women working in factories and the press “often visited our facilities” to report on the development. In the latter half of the 1970s when the Passol 50cc commuter model was released specifically targeting women, the production line for the scooter was staffed entirely by women and it became quite the headline, states the company.
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