Industrialists, engineers and further education staff are being the chance to learn the secrets of Japanese manufacturing efficiency first hand in an initiative being run jointly by the SMMT Industry Forum and the Automotive Academy.

A programme of visits is being run to take groups of industry executives and educationalists to visit some of Japan's top flight manufacturing companies next March.

The two week visit from Saturday March 4 to Friday March 17 will give delegates unprecedented access to manufacturing processes which are the envy of the world and are rarely duplicated outside Japan with total effectiveness.

The visit programme has been made possible by a network of contacts made by SMMT Industry Forum director Arthur David, who formerly worked for Nissan, and Industry Forum executive coordinator Koji Wanaka, who was a senior official at Honda.

A group of 20 industrialists and education staff have recently returned from a pilot visit and a further group is due to leave for Japan soon.

The visits include detailed briefings by senior management at Nissan, Honda and Toyota and their major suppliers, as well as nonautomotive companies such as Toshiba and Sony.

SMMT Industry Forum director Arthur David said the current skills shortages facing industry convinced them of the benefits of taking people from further education too.

He said: "To tackle the skills issue there is a range of proper, validated courses giving recognised qualifications in the skills that manufacturers need.

"However it is vital that the people delivering and assessing these courses are right up to date with the latest thinking in terms of lean manufacturing, quality, waste elimination, cost, efficiency and delivery.

"We often say be careful who you learn from and what better way of ensuring that the quality of the learning experience is as good as it can be than learning first hand from the best in the world?

The Industry Forum, based on Birmingham Business Park, was set up in 1996 to drive for the achievement of world-leading competitiveness in the UK-based vehicle and components industry.

Mr David added: "It is also said that we can't compete with Far Eastern countries because our labour costs are high. But Japan has some of the highest labour costs in the world and still leads the way in manufacturing efficiency."