Helping with Adventurer Party Management - Chapter 96

After thinking it over, I decide to stop agonizing and focus on delivering results rather than getting lost in worries. If there are tasks I can’t handle myself, I should ask for help. If there are things I don’t know, I should consult others. My role is to visit places, utilize people, and streamline work with ingenuity.

Once I resolve this, things start to brighten up. I’m no longer alone. People don’t follow someone who is gloomy. There’s no benefit in worrying those around me. As the saying goes, “Start from within.”

So, I start by cleaning my own office. A capable person’s desk is always neat. An office of a profitable company is well-organized.

Next, I’ll organize customer information. There are four types: “Records of novice adventurers who participated in tours,” “Records of novice adventurers who had their foot size taken,” “Lower-ranking nobles and knights who ordered Guardian Shoes,” and “Some high-ranking nobles who ordered Guardian Shoes.”

Organizing this data reveals biases and missing information, but analyzing it will come later. For now, I prioritize sorting and cleaning.

Looking with an eye for organization, I see that the workshop is a mess. While the layout of workstations remains as it was initially, tools and fixtures are left in disarray, and scraps of leather and trash cover the floor.

The workshop needs the 5S approach: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. Starting tomorrow, I need to spend time at the workshop to begin this training. There’s no uniform or radio calisthenics, so I need to introduce some form of group behavior.

It’s fine to worry about potential future clients, but first, I must properly maintain the backbone of shoe manufacturing. I can’t miss this opportunity to monopolize the shoe manufacturing rights. The strength of the workshop lies in its system.

Fortunately, I have extensive experience in guiding factories. I’ll set aside my reservations and focus on implementing modern systems. From today, I will turn this workshop into a Japanese-style manufacturing facility.

• Attendance Management: Create a schedule for my own outings and make it clear. A schedule for about five days ahead should suffice. Attendance management for craftsmen is also necessary. Since we don’t have card readers, we’ll use wooden pieces with names written on them; flip them over when arriving and turn them back when leaving.
• Tool and Fixture Management: Normally, names are written on tools to indicate responsibility, but many tools have unreadable names, so I’ll use numbers instead. Counting them, I found two tools missing. This is my fault for not managing the tool inventory.
• Work-in-Progress Inventory Management: We need to make the location of the in-progress Guardian Shoes visible.
• Visualization of Bottlenecks: Place baskets for the shoes between each process, and the areas where they pile up indicate the workshop’s bottlenecks.

At present, each craftsman can only handle one task, but they need to be able to handle two tasks to help with bottleneck processes.

• Craftsman Skill Management: It’s necessary to create a skill chart for each craftsman to track which processes they can handle.
• Reward System Based on Learning: Craftsmen who become capable of handling multiple tasks should receive increased wages. It’s also important to publicize this to enhance their motivation to learn.
• Process-Specific Goal Management: There isn’t yet a system in place to manage goals for each process, such as the number of shoes that need to be made each day and how many have been completed. Use large boards with numbered wooden pieces, and have the final process craftsman flip one piece at a time as each pair is completed.
• Quality Inspection: For now, I should handle the final quality inspections. Ideally, I want to conduct destructive testing as well, but I can’t bring myself to delegate this to the craftsmen. Once their awareness improves, I want to start improvement activities and discuss improvements while inspecting repaired shoes.

After dinner, while muttering to myself and setting aside my reservations, I start carving wooden pieces, rearranging parchment, creating booklets, and drawing lines on boards. Sara is completely taken aback by my behavior.

I wrestle with whether introducing Japanese-style manufacturing in another world is appropriate, but that’s a discussion for another time. Since I decided to establish a company and manufacture shoes for novice adventurers, I must adhere strictly to the basics as an ordinary person without cheats.

First, I need to start moving, create systems, and improve them if things don’t go well. If that still doesn’t work, I should stop and think. If I don’t understand, I should ask others for advice. This cycle of repeating and improving is the essence of work, isn’t it?

With this mindset, I optimistically think everything will work out well.

The next day, I begin explaining and instructing the craftsmen as they arrive for work. However, my system, based on Japanese discipline and ethics, doesn’t work at all. It’s like trying to eat a picture of a rice cake—purely conceptual.

The fundamental common sense is completely different. Despite spending over five years in this world, I had underestimated these differences.

The craftsmen question everything: “Why should we do that?”

I had gathered young craftsmen thinking it would be easier to teach them, but age doesn’t matter when it comes to differences in common sense. When I try to manage attendance, they ask, “Why should we do that?”

Coming from small workshops where a few apprentices work under a master, they have no concept of personnel management. I explain that attendance management is to determine monthly salaries, but they don’t seem convinced.

In this world, management techniques are not advanced, so wages for craftsmen are typically paid daily or based on performance. Given this situation, I decide to abandon the idea of monthly salaries and opt for a daily wage system.

When I instruct them to place tools in designated spots after use, they ask, “Why should we do that?”

Since this method isn’t catching on, I create belts for each craftsman to carry their tools, linking them with numbers. Once they accept that the tools are their own, they begin carrying them around themselves, achieving the same effect. They can place the tools with the belt in the designated spot upon leaving work.

Making the inventory of partially completed items visible is met with strong resistance: “Why should we do that?”

They argue that it is natural for delays to occur as they work carefully on their tasks. I explain that the purpose is to make delays visible so the entire team can assist, but this concept doesn’t resonate with craftsmen who lack a sense of teamwork.

Despite their reluctance, I implement the system by force. The process involves taking partially completed items from the previous stage’s basket, working on the assigned part, and placing them in the next basket. It’s necessary to make this a habit.

This situation applies to everything. Reforms in the craftsmen’s awareness or voluntary improvement activities seem out of reach. Ideal conditions are maintained, but each day is spent aligning the system with the craftsmen’s motivation and habits.

Even though this resembles factory training in Asia, I continue to guide them, using higher wages and performance-based rewards compared to other local workshops as incentives to get the workshop on track.

I had hoped that someone among the current craftsmen would emerge as a process manager, but it seems unlikely for now. The gap between ideal and reality is indeed vast.