Ban Meeting
A weekly hour in which each working team reviews its tasks and TACT targets, last week’s variances and the week’s safety.
The Ban is the smallest unit of a Daewoo yard: a working team of eight to fifteen people led by a foreman, the Ban-jang. Every team met for one hour at the start of each week. It reviewed each member’s tasks and confirmed the TACT targets, analysed the previous week’s variances (drawings not received, materials not staged, accuracy deviations) and verified safety for the work ahead.
The meeting made self-management a routine. The team sees deviations first, because it is running the rhythm; it can act without waiting for authorization; and the result is its own. Statistical control continued, but as the secondary instrument.
It was the Korean addition to a method that began with the U.S. National Shipbuilding Research Program and was refined in Japan, and it is the feature that best explains why the Okpo system kept delivering for three decades.
- 1FirstEach member’s tasks for the week and the TACT targets.
- 2ThenLast week’s variances: drawings, materials, accuracy.
- 3LastSafety for the week’s planned operations.
“On paper there was one chief executive. In the operation of the shipyard there were five hundred, one for each working team.”