Kawasaki Heavy Industries - Far More Than Just Motorcycles

The Akashi, Kobe And Hyogo Works
In the motorcycle manufacture and assembly areas of the Akashi Works facility, we saw the usual assembly lines filled with all manner of bikes, using the now-accepted "JIT" (Just In Time) production method, which functions on the principle of only ordering and stocking parts for that day's scheduled production (in fact, delivery of many components at the receiving docks was on a tight 30-minute time schedule). This means the assembly lines aren't constrained to building one particular model for any period of time; only the parts required for each motorcycle are delivered, and they are brought up to the assembly lines in electronically tagged bins that prevent the wrong parts from being used. So a group of five Concours 14 sport-tourers in an assembly line may be followed by a dozen cruisers, with a few Z1000s and KLX enduros sprinkled in for good measure.

One interesting contradiction of sorts was that the assembly lines-including much of the engine and frame production facilities-were still completely human-operated. Although we've yet to see a motorcycle assembly line that isn't almost entirely human, Kawasaki is one of the pioneers in manufacturing robotics, and the Akashi Works houses most of the company's R&D departments in that field...yet there were hardly any robotic systems in sight. Kawasaki reps stated that although robotics are being studied, motorcycles require extremely detailed assembly in many areas, and the added flexibility demands of JIT production make it unfeasible at the moment. While watching a female assembly worker install rings on a piston, we could understand why; the finger dexterity she displayed while swiftly installing three rings (including a fragile, three-piece oil control ring) in little more than six seconds was mesmerizing.

Before departing the Akashi Works, we were allowed to see the facility's own private motorcycle museum. Inside were many historic championship racing machines from Kawasaki's lengthy racing history, including the KZ1000-S1 that Eddie Lawson used to win the first of his two AMA Superbike titles, the ZX-7R that Scott Russell used to win the World Superbike Championship in '93, as well as the ultra-trick ZX-7R-based F1 machine that Russell and co-rider Aaron Slight used to win the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hour race that same year. Pristine examples of many landmark Kawasaki production bikes were also on display.

The Kobe Works shipyard was awe-inspiring mostly for the monstrous scale of its products, both externally and internally. We were first allowed to tour the crew's quarters, bridge and engine room of the nearly completed "Orient Phoenix" bulk carrier ship, a freighter that measures more than 118 feet wide and 623 feet long, capable of carrying 55,500 tons of cargo. The ship is powered by a gargantuan, six-cylinder, two-stroke diesel engine that cranks out about 10,000 horsepower at a sky-high 150 rpm (yes, one-five-zero).

We were able to get a better idea of a typical freighter engine's size when we walked through the Kobe Works' engine assembly area. In this huge building, a few engines were in various states of construction. The bigger ones, like the seven-cylinder unit at the front of the line, are about three or four stories tall; the "crankcase" is so huge that there is a normal-size door to allow maintenance access to each cylinder cavity, with ladder rungs welded to the inside walls. These enormous engines obviously cannot be installed in a ship ready to run; they are basically pre-assembled and test run in this building, then disassembled so that the parts can be hoisted into a ship's engine room for final assembly. On one wall was a poster showing the catalog of available engines; the top-of-the-line 12-cylinder unit is about five stories tall, has 98cm bores, weighs more than 2400 tons and puts out 100,000 horsepower.

We then walked through several other buildings where various engine components were being readied for assembly. A set of stainless steel pistons-each the size of a coffee table-sat next to a pallet of piston rings that looked like oversized metal hula hoops. Seven-foot-tall connecting rods were being fitted up to be magnafluxed to check for cracks and imperfections. A crankshaft the size of a small truck was sitting on a huge block stand, waiting to get its crank journals polished. And yet while the scale of components was huge, the attention to detail on the smallest areas was not overlooked; we saw one worker grinding off the burrs of what appeared to be one of the crank plain bearings that was about the size of a kitchen sink.

This is a piston and "piston rod" (sort of a secondary connecting rod) from one of the huge freighter ship engines that are built at Kawasaki's Kobe Works shipyard. The stainless steel piston is more than three feet high, nearly the same diameter and probably weighs more than 1000 pounds. We doubt you'd be able to fit it in your ZX-14...

Here is a set of main connecting rods from one of the enormous two-stroke diesel ship engines. They stand more than eight feet tall and surely weigh several thousand pounds. The sections on top are not actual pistons; they are called "crossheads," which form the attachment point for the piston rod, which then attaches to the actual piston.

The Hyogo Works Rolling Stock railyard may not have been as dramatic as the Kobe shipyard, but it was still an interesting facility. Especially fascinating was the level of detail in the construction of the latest-generation shinkansen bullet train; for instance, the skin of the train is smoother than most aircraft, and the windows are painstakingly assembled as flush as possible with the rest of the body. The locomotive driver's room resembles an aircraft pilot's cockpit, with a huge array of instruments and dials on the dashboard.

Remember what we were saying about the chances of you having used some sort of Kawasaki product during your lifetime? If you live in New York City, Boston or Philadelphia, then it's likely a near certainty. That's because a large portion of the subway trains used in those cities are made by Kawasaki, manufactured at either the Hyogo Works or the company's U.S. assembly plants in Yonkers, NY or Lincoln, NE.