Case Study: Trouble at Tessei

Case analysis:

The case is about a subsidiary of East Japan Railway Company, Tessei, which was struggling
due to safety issues, operational mistakes, customer complaints and high employee
turnover in 2004. In 2005, Teruo Yabe, had reached the retirement age after a
distinguished 39-year career at a traditional Japanese company JR East. He worked in
safety, operations and management and was asked by the Vice Chairman to lead a
turnaround at Tessei by implementing Amakudari.

At Tessei, one of the most complicated cleaning operations in the world was being
performed, the cleaning of Shinkansen (”bullet”) trains in exactly seven minutes. Japanese
customers paid a fare equivalent to an airplane to ride the Shinkansen and so perfect on-
time cleanliness was expected. Also, in Japan train cleaning was considered a “3K” job:
kitanai (dirty), kitsui (difficult), and kiken (dangerous) so recruiting talented and motivated
individuals to Tessei was very difficult. The employees who worked at Tessei had
difficulties finding other jobs due to unfavorable career histories and so lacked internal
motivation. Majority of them were part time workers having an average age of 53.

Tessei cleaned Shinkansen trains at four stations: Tokyo, Ueno, Oyama and Tabata. Tokyo
was the largest station and120 trains were cleaned everyday by employing a highly
standardized procedure. The complexity was high as the trains differed in configurations
and length due to which the employees had to be at the right place when a train arrived.
Every new hire was given a Tessei’s Cleaning Manual, which included detailed descriptions
of each work process, guidelines governing the state of employees’ physical condition,
clothing and cleaning supplies. Trained senior employees provided on-the-job training to
each new hire. Everyday, specific instructions were given and tasks were assigned to the
employees which were to be completed within a time frame after which warm-up
exercises were done.

The employees came three minutes prior to the scheduled arrival time of the train,
cleaned the platform’s garbage cans and waited for all the passengers to exit. Then, after
checking the forbidden movement indicator and hanging a “cleaning in progress sign”, the
employees would enter the train, clean the train in exactly 7 minutes and exit. Employees
were trained to move forward while picking up the garbage and extra care was taken not
to spill leftover drinks while collecting them. Any forgotten items were taken to the
station’s lost and found centre. After cleaning the floor and table trays, disposable
headrest cover called motare was affixed to different sized headrest with velcro. At the
end, a visual check was done to confirm that motare, blind and seating direction were in
position and all the tasks were completed. After completion of the task, the employees
would return to the designated Tessei rooms beneath the platform to prepare for their
next assignments.

Solution to the problems:

Tessei’s quality, timeliness, customer and employee satisfaction and safety records all
seemed subpar. To solve these problems in upcoming months, firstly the operational
levers should be pulled.

 Employee daily tasks should be fixed rather than varying them frequently. This
would make the employee an expert in his/her work and thus the speed and
efficiency of doing the work would improve.
 Kaizen should be promoted and the performance of various processes should be
altered as per the requirements to improve efficiency and reduce time taken to do
various activities.
 The complexity of the fixtures like headrests should be eliminated to prevent wrong
installation of parts.
 Suitable PPE-Personal Protective Equipment should be provided to all the
employees to ensure safety.

Certain organizational measures which can be taken by Yabe are:

 Employees with prior experience in cleaning should be preferred and an age limit
should be set.
 The employees should be allowed to interact with customers and take decisions
which are beneficial for Tessei, if it improves the quality of work.
 The senior trained staff should support the new hires and train them in all the
domains and encourage feedback. 
 The senior staff should be polite and sympathetic toward all the employees and
motivate them to work hard.
 Measures should be taken to change how train cleaning job is perceived among
people so that young motivated people apply for the jobs and take pride in it.