1.前言 日本耐火材料工业随着炼钢工业的发展取得了令人满意的进展。但近十年来却面临着十分困难的局面,即炼钢、炼铁技术进步带来了耐火材料单耗和单位成本持继下降。耐火材料产量的不断减少,给耐火材料制造商的赢利带来了严重的问题。为了生存,他们不得不极力提高劳动生产率。 1. Introduction The refractory industry in Japan has made satisfactory progress with the development of the steelmaking industry. However, it has faced a very difficult situation in the past decade. That is, the progress made in steelmaking and ironmaking has brought the unit consumption of refractories and unit costs to drop. The decreasing output of refractories poses a serious problem for the profitability of refractories manufacturers. In order to survive, they have to work hard to improve labor productivity.