It is hard to miss when taking the train in Japan:
White-gloved employees in crisp uniforms pointing smartly down the platform and calling out — seemingly to no one — as trains glide in and out of the station. Onboard is much the same, with drivers and conductors performing almost ritual-like movements as they tend to an array of dials, buttons and screens.
While these might strike visitors as silly, the movements and shouts are a Japanese-innovated industrial safety method known as pointing-and-calling; a system that reduces workplace errors by up to 85 percent.
Known in Japanese as shisa kanko, pointing-and-calling works on the principle of associating one’s tasks with physical movements and vocalizations to prevent errors by “raising the consciousness levels of workers”—according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Japan. Rather than rely on a worker’s eyes or habit alone, each step in a given task is reinforced physically and audibly to ensure the step is both complete and accurate.
Interesting, and with the emphases on ritual and physicality so associated with Japanese methods, at least in Western assumptions of them.
It would seem to share some of its basic concepts with other methods of ensuring completeness, compliance, or attention, such as running a checklist out loud, or call-and-response approaches to teamwork.
A friend of mine worked at a Japanese plant in the US. Employees were required to use hand signals to cross an aisle-way. Look left/point left…Look right/point right…Look ahead/point ahead before proceeding. Evidently the Japanese are pushing shisa kanko to the factory floor. We had a laugh since we didn’t know why such a ritual. We understood it was for safety, but to the American mind it is way over the top for crossing the ‘street.’