Japan Tobacco Meets Annual Demand of the Croatian Market in One Shift

When the third largest cigarette manufacturer in the world, Japan Tobacco International, arrived in Croatia this spring, one of the first questions was whether they would open a factory here in the foreseeable future.

The answer, to the disappointment of many, was not positive, but when one learns a bit about their factory in the German city of Trier, it becomes clear why the company has no interest in starting production in Croatia. The factory located in a small town near the border with Luxembourg produces enough cigarettes for the annual needs of the Croatian market in one shift, explained Norbert Golde, the director of production services, during a visit by Croatian journalists to the factory, while enjoying a puff of smoke in the meeting room. This amounts to about 76 million cigarettes annually, which is a drop in the ocean of production that rolls out around 50 billion nicotine delights each year. More precisely, 54 billion is planned for this year. The company, with 25 factories worldwide, produces hundreds of billions of cigarettes annually, packaged in over 100 brands, thanks to more than 25,000 employees, of whom 1,222 work in the birthplace of Karl Marx. In this factory, according to the established schedule, practically everything the company has in its portfolio is produced, featuring brands such as Winston, Camel, and Sobranie, for those with a more refined taste and a pocket deep enough to maintain that taste.

In the oldest German city, dating back to Roman times, with about a hundred thousand inhabitants, the Japanese multinational is, as expected, the largest employer with a production tradition spanning 37 years. In line with its production philosophy, kaizen, the factory strives for continuous improvement of the entire process, raising the limit of cigarettes produced per second every few years, currently set at 20,000. The factory takes great pride in this philosophy, which consists of a four-step cycle aimed at continuous improvement of the production process at every level by involving all employees. The pervasiveness of kaizen is most easily seen at the entrance to each of the factory halls, where examples of achieved improvements are regularly displayed, using a before-and-after system, along with boards carefully filled with employee suggestions and indicators of progress in their realization. 

In simple terms, the innovation cycle consists of identifying problems, precise analysis and data collection about them, arriving at the root cause, developing solutions, usually no more than three, and checking the effectiveness of the applied solution. As seen from the last phase, this is a continuous process, never actually completed. How fertile this concept, common in Japanese factories and directly linked to their mentality of an orderly world and self-discipline, has fallen in Germany is shown by two examples. At the entrance to each hall, there are large doors and right next to them, small ones. The rules dictate that people pass through the small ones, while the large ones are reserved for trucks, forklifts, and the like. The Croatian contingent, of course, regularly wanted to go through the large ones, which caused panic attacks among the hosts. As it later turned out, even crossing from red to green at the traffic light, in the midst of a quiet Trier night with no dogs on the street, does not go well.

In combination with kaizen, the company uses another Japanese concept, the so-called 5S methodology for organizing the workplace. Derived from five Japanese words, seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke (sorting, organizing, cleanliness, standardizing, and self-discipline), the method aims to reduce inefficiencies, long search times (for papers, tools, etc.), and clutter. In this way, losses and material costs are reduced while work efficiency and the future of the company are increased. Thus, the workplace must be organized (only necessary items, excesses to be stored or discarded), systematized (everything must have its place and label), kept clean, standardized (all workplaces must be the same), and maintained through self-discipline. Therefore, aside from the fact that there is no need for it, given the existing capacities elsewhere, the question is how well kaizen and 5S would succeed in Croatian conditions. It would indeed be interesting to see how many workers would pass through the small doors. (Vanja Figenwald)