アレルギーはありますか? – The woman in front of me is busy typing on the keyboard of her tablet. I only understand it when the app spits out the translation. “Do you have an allergy?” it says. Shake your head. It’s December and I’m sitting in a hospital in Nagasaki. My friend injured his hand. At the time of our hospital visit, our Japanese vocabulary includes two Duolingo lessons: “Hello. Thank you. Two beers please. Yes. Where is the toilet? No. Yum. Bye.” To answer a medical history form in Japanese: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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While I’m imagining a lengthy procedure, a nurse with an iPad turns the corner and starts the translation app. Relieved, we left the hospital a short time later with the wound stitched and a prescription. Photos of the tablets are shown on the prescription. The design is simple but ingenious. No translation is required. I will come across well-thought-out user experiences like this more often on my journey, from local transport to disaster relief. But what is so different in Japan than here?
Kaizen comes from manufacturing, not Silicon Valley
The Japanese secret is called Kaizen. The Chinese word is made up of 改 kai – change, change – and 善 zen – for the better. It is a Japanese life and work philosophy based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can lead to significant improvements. Kaizen comes from manufacturing, from the factories of Toyota and Co., not from the glittering software factories of Silicon Valley. Disruption and innovation, the big changes of digital transformation, are the opposite of the small steps of Kaizen. But I see the results it leads to: customer focus, punctuality, smooth processes, high security standards. In short: perfection. Instead of adding new technology to broken processes, the processes are optimized.
(Bild:
Oliver Ajkovic
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Julia Kloiber works on fair and inclusive digital futures as co-founder of the feminist organization Superrr Lab. She regularly publishes her column in the print edition of MIT Technology Review.
Never before have I been able to use a local public transport system as conveniently as in Japanese cities. From contactless check-in, signs to the right carriage, barrier-free guidance systems, clean toilets, contactless locking of lockers and floor markings for orderly entry and exit. Best of all, the smoothness scales. Over 1.1 million people walk through stations like Tokyo Station every day.
This perfection is teamwork. The much-cited cultural change that is needed for digital transformation is the core of Kaizen. All employees are encouraged to ensure improvements in their areas, eliminate errors and bottlenecks and suggest solutions to problems. At Toyota, for example, every employee on the production line can stop the process at the push of a button. Cultural change is not preached from above, but is lived every day.
Routine in extreme situations
Kaizen is part of the routine. This is also evident in extreme situations: “Bääp Bääp earthquake Bääp Bääp” – it sounds from my and all the surrounding cell phones on January 1st at 4:10 p.m. sharp. I crouch on the floor in front of a sushi restaurant and hold my hands protectively over my head. Signs are falling around me. A girl is crying. The man next to me films the shaking walls. Later we will find out that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 was measured not too far away from us. The region’s worst earthquake in four decades. A tsunami warning follows a few seconds after the first cell phone message. The staff at the sushi shop instructs us to go to the station forecourt. There, employees inform passers-by with megaphones. Despite the state of emergency, the processes seem routine, as if they had been trained and optimized hundreds of times before.
Two days later I’m sitting on the Shinkansen bound for Tokyo. High-speed train services resumed just one day after the quake. As I get in, I feel an aftershock. The conductor walks through the aisles and politely apologizes for the extraordinary delay. It is 15 minutes.
(jl)
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