The Largest Submarine in The World, Sentoku

During World War II, Japan built Sentoku the largest submarine in the world. This class of submarine, which was also named I-400, had hangar constructed on the upper main deck to accommodate three floatplane bombers, Aichi M6A Seiran. The submarine was reported to be 60% larger than the largest American submarine. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) ordered the construction of the I-400 submarine class as their secret weapons to destroy major US cities and the Panama Canal - the main route for the US to logistically supply their troops fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific. The Japanese had suffered great loss during the marine battles in Guadalcanal, and Midway as well as land battles in the Netherlands New Guinea island. It had been planned that the launching of surprised attacks on the Panama Cannal and US big cities would stop the US from immediately supplying their troops in that region thus providing enough time for the Japanese to consolidate and strengthen their troops.

Unfortunately for the Japan, the I-400 submarines could not fulfil their mission because the US had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapon forcing the Japanese government to surrender without any condition. Sentoku and her sisters submarines could carry aerial torpedoes, three 800 kg bombs and twelve 240 kg bombs to arm their Seiran aircrafts. The propulsion of this submarine was powered by four 3,000 hp engines with enough fuel to travel around the world 1.5 times.

The Management Principles of the Toyota Way

All of us know what Toyota is. It is a giant automaker from Japan. This company was a small company in the rural areas of Nagoya during 1950s. Now with around 240,000 employees, Toyota Motor serves millions of car owners around the world.

Gemba is a Japanese term for "the actual place," while "kaizen" is the Japanese terminology for continuous improvement. So the phrase "gemba kaizen" means continuous improvements at the actual place. The main theme of Toyota Way management principles is the elimination of wastes along the production line of Toyota automaker to create the highest added value of the products to satisfy customers.

According The Toyota Way, a book which was written by Jeffrey Liker, Toyota has developed and standardized its management principles since 1950s when the Japanese were trying to recover from the ruins of Word War II.

After reading the book, I can conclude that the fourteen management principles can be applied to any business. Everybody who has not read the book might think that the Kaizen is only effective for automakers or manufacturing companies. But the principles such as grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and teach it to others are applicable to all companies.

When Toyota was still a small company it had to face many challenges during its operation, from the lack of capital to the competition with other world class automakers. It is amazing to see that Toyota now is a world leader in car industry producing the best quality cars for all market segments. Toyota tremendous achievements are reached through the application of Toyota Production System (TPS). Toyota emerges as the best automaker in the world that manufactures the most fuel efficient cars. The Toyota Way inspires many companies to streamline their operations. 
Also read: Car Manufacturers Develop Air Bag for Pedestrian

Car Manufacturers Develop Air Bag for Pedestrian

Recently, NHK, a Japanese national TV station screened a news which says that Japanese car manufacturers are now developing technologies that can protect pedestrians from suffering fatal injuries or deaths during a street accident. Such technologies include speed and pedestrian sensors, as well as air bag, for pedestrian. The sophisticated and expensive equipment will be installed at cars' bonnet or hood. If a pedestrian stands in front of a fast moving car, the pedestrian sensor will instruct the computer to activate the car's brake to prevent it from hitting the pedestrian.

Toyota, a leading car manufacturer is developing this technology. One of its shareholders has requested this accident prevention technology to be developed and installed in cars after his daughter was hit by a car several years ago.

According to a researcher in the car industry, installing such equipment will be considered very expensive for car buyers. The additional price of such pedestrian sensor and air bag is 6,000 US dollars per car. Many car buyers do not see such technology or equipment as a must for their cars.

Japanese car manufacturers are trying to lower the cost so that the technology will commercially be viable for all cars. Until now only owners of luxurious that can afford for such pedestrian protection technology to be installed in their cars. by Charles Roring

The Collapse of Japanese and Chinese Recycling Businesses

by Charles Roring

Recycling has been a hot issue in recent days. Global warming and reduction of CO₂ emission are now the concern of everybody. This concern can also be seen in Japan and China, two great Asian countries. Japan as the most industrialized nation discharges huge amount of used plastic bottles every day. They can be recycled and formed into other products such as jackets, shoes and even beds.

Japanese municipality authorities have been exporting used plastic bottles to companies in China for years. This operation, besides reducing the burden many Japanese businesses have to bear for reprocessing or recycling the plastics wastes, brings in a lot of profit to Japanese municipalities.

During the current economic slowdown, the demand for plastic wastes from China is going down rapidly. In China, the plastic bottles are cut into smaller pieces, washed and processed into synthetic cotton which the raw material for clothes that use synthetic fibers.

The lower demand for the recyclable plastic bottles is caused by the lower demand of plastic or synthetic products in Europe, the United States and many other Asian countries.

Piles of plastic bottles are now becoming a serious problem for the municipality authorities in most of the Japanese cities. They cannot export these plastic wastes to China anymore.

In addition, the lower price of fuel oil has been another factor that stops Chinese businesses to import used plastic bottles from China. They see that synthetic cotton made of oil is softer than the one made from used plastic bottles.

Japanese recycling companies are not ready to absorb the continued growing of used plastic bottles that are discharged by Japanese house holds everyday. Their capacity is smaller than the number of wastes they have to recycle.

There is one company in Japan that is now trying to recycle the used plastic bottles into plastic bottles again hoping that they can create a closed cycle for the plastic bottles which are now used and produced in Japan. They successfully constructed and tested the plastic bottles recycling plant but later they found out the production cost is higher than directly producing the bottles from raw material which is oil.

Although it is more expensive, the recycling of used plastic bottles to produce new plastic bottles has saved 40% of the energy consumption. This is another positive point which makes the Japanese company to their operation. In the future, when the price of fuel oil has returned to normal again, they believe that their plant will be more economical and produce profits for the company.

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