Mass Retirement May Lead to Loss of Technical Skills Part 1.

(From Journal of Japanese Trade & Industry (JJTI))

Byline: Tanaka Fusahiro

Japan's baby boomers, approximately 6.91 million people born from 1947 to 1949, will start to retire in 2007. Comprising 5.4% of the total population, such a mass loss of workers in a short period of time is unprecedented in the modern world. Combined with a Japan's rapidly aging society with falling birthrate, which is progressing at a pace hitherto unknown in the world, the mass retirement of the baby boomers could potentially have an enormous effect on the country's future economic growth, and this concern has become the subject of debate from various perspectives.

In particular, the loss of production skills from manufacturing industries, which are regarded as Japan's economic core, is a hot topic. Japan's baby boomers account for a large proportion of blue-collar jobs. (Fig. 1) The typical composition of the labor force structure of the Japanese manufacturing sector forms a wine glass shape, where the baby boomers aged over 50 are particularly numerous, while conversely there are only a few workers in their late 30s to late 40s. Realizing the dangers of such a distorted labor force structure, companies have subsequently increased employment and the number of young workers has recently started to increase. According to Yamada Hitoshi, director of the Personal Education Center for Kaizen (PEC) and the evangelist of Toyota Production Systems who led Sony and Canon to a revolution in production, "Over the last 10 years, companies have neglected the human resources development in the production field. Japan has lost its manufacturing strength." Yamada Hisashi, chief researcher at the Japan Research Institute, also remarks, "It is the strength of the manufacturing industry that gives Japan its strength. The shortage of skilled workers will certainly become a serious problem." A recent survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare shows one third of manufacturing sectors - and of those chemical industries comprise just under 50% and aircraft manufacturers approximately 40% - are concerned about the so-called Year 2007 problem. Japan is being forced to rethink its skilled manufacturing.

Back to Basics at the Training Program Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is one of the many companies facing the problem of the transfer of technical skills. The company, which manufactures and develops heavy machinery in a wide range of fields including shipbuilding, aerospace, power systems, general machinery, special vehicles and nuclear energy systems, massively increased its labor force during the shipbuilding boom in 1970-1975. However, following the first oil shock of the 1970s, the shipbuilding boom ended and the company cut recruitment for 10 years. Consequently the proportion of workers now in their late 30s to late 40s is very small, giving the labor force structure the typical wine glass shape. At present, the company employs 13,000 skilled workers. The majority of them are the baby boomers, and half of them will retire over the next 10 years. However, a company-wide effort to hand on the proficient skills and to train skilled workers is a relatively new thing for the MHI. The impetus came following a series of disasters in 2002, such as the snapping of a cable on a fighter aircraft ...