05
Unfaltering Commitment to Manufacturing Excellence

About 100 km to the northeast of Atlanta, the largest city in the southeastern state of Georgia, the U.S., the city of Jefferson is home to Kubota Industrial Equipment Corporation (KIE), which is solely responsible for production of Kubota’s construction machinery in North America. Together with Kubota Manufacturing of America Corporation nearby, KIE underpins Kubota’s manufacturing in the U.S.
Established in 2004, KIE began operation as a producer of implements for tractors. In lockstep with the subsequent expansion of Kubota’s North American business, however, its list of production items has grown longer and longer to include the mid-size tractor and then skid steer loaders (SSLs). One thing that is common to these aforementioned machines is that they are all favorites among local users in North America. Wherever it is, Kubota makes it a rule to produce locally for local consumption, that is, to build a plant as close as possible to a consumption area to produce what they want. This is the crux of a bottom-up approach - monitoring how products are being used to find what can be improved in real time and feeding back any findings to the production f loor. In fact, it was through this process that KIE began producing SSLs. When Kubota first released its SSLs in North America in 2015, they still had to export them from Japan. Given the difficulty in responding promptly to any change in demand in the growing market by exporting the products from Japan, however, Kubota decided to start operating an SSL production line in the U.S., transferring part of production to KIE in 2016. SSLs have since been produced both at KIE and in Japan, churning out quality products to the satisfaction of local users.

One of the most important tasks any production site is given is to accomplish stable and efficient production. To fulfill this all-important task, KIE is currently focusing on the reduction of order delivery lead-time. Any reduction in the lead-time from getting order to produce and deliver one unit of a product directly leads to increased customer satisfaction and lower costs, which then significantly enhances the product’s competitive edge. This is especially true for construction machinery, whose demand f luctuates depending on economic trends, thus giving rise to the need for a f lexible production setup. By continuous effort, they allocate the surplus capacity, then it is possible to expand their business. Meanwhile, KIE is also prepared and willing to increase their local content. Since their inception, most components have been procured from overseas, but they plan to replace imports with made-in-America components in stages. At KIE, they define “manufacturing” as a broad spectrum of business activities that range “from procurement to shipment,” rather than merely what happens on the production f loor. In keeping with this mentality, they are making frequent visits to suppliers in the U.S., while at the same time creating a system for assisting them in improving their manufacturing, in a bid to realize “local production for local consumption” in the truest sense of the phrase.
Another important task for a production center is to maintain a high level of quality. “High quality” is synonymous with Kubota, and to maintain such a prestigious status is something that Kubota sees as critical in order to retain its pride as a time-honored manufacturer. “It all boils down to human resource development,” says Omero Renteria, KIE Manager in charge of manufacturing.
“For us to work on challenges such as shortening lead-time and assuring quality, we must improve the skills of our employees and provide them with training opportunities. To build an SSL, we have to assemble numerous components, which is rather complicated, and so operators need to be sufficiently skilled. It thus takes quality training to develop a person into a full-fledged operator. So, we develop work instruction guides and other textbooks, which feature many photographs and illustrations, in a repeated attempt to develop our employees efficiently. We are also trying to share the mindset among our team members - say, when we encounter an issue, everyone is encouraged to investigate its true cause and seek solutions. Our persisting desire is to develop an organization where people are highly motivated to make things better.” (Omero Renteria)
At every production site of Kubota, KIE included, is the way of thinking of the Kubota Production System (KPS), in which the principle is “Aiming to realize inspiring manufacture by offering products and services surpassing customers’ ‘requirements’ at speeds beyond ‘expectations.’ ” It is this sheer dedication to manufacturing that allows Kubota to deliver products that the market truly desires.

Meeting the needs of versatile applications in urban settings, compact construction machinery is instrumental in creating a comfortably constructed city. As the construction machinery market in the U.S. looks set to expand further, Kubota bears a significant responsibility to supply construction machinery to the market as it has done in so many instances. To fulfill brisk demand, the next step is taking shape: preparing to ramp up capacity for compact track loaders (CTLs) and SSLs by establishing a new plant in the Midwestern U.S. within a few years. KIE is also expected to play an essential role in such upscaling of production.
“Amid the constant changes in the needs of the construction machinery market, we manufacturers have a role in delivering quality products that customers want under any circumstances. We have the experience of overcoming numerous challenges since we started production here back in 2016,” comments Brian Arnold, KIE Vice President. “I am certain that the knowledge and know-how that we have thus amassed will be of great use in starting up another plant. Similarly, if and when we need to launch a new line of products in response to a change in preferences in this market, our previous experiences will undoubtedly be invaluable in doing so. With many such different possibilities in mind, we will strive for even greater excellence in manufacturing.”
With KIE paving the way, Kubota’s local production of construction machinery moves on to the next phase, and there is no doubt that further acceleration of its construction machinery business in North America is simply a matter of time.