Hello. This is Nichinan Seiki Co., Ltd. headquartered in Komaki City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.

This blog entry introduces the Managing Director of our corporation, YANO Atsushi through an in-house interview. Please read through Mr. Yano’s talk on the future of Nichinan Seiki and his passion for it.

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Your thoughts on how to change Nicninan Seiki for the future?

I think Nichinan Seiki needs to create an environment where young employees can work comfortably. We have many experienced employees. Our challenge is to create a system to pass on the accumulated knowledge and technology to the younger employees, so we established a new division called Technical Sales Division.

Nichinan Seiki have had an issue that the technical quality of the sales representatives varies depending on the individuals, thus we could gain some orders from our customers but lost others depending on the representatives in charge. By creating Technical Sales Division, we aim to make proposals to our customers as a company, not as an individual representative. Since Nichinan Seiki always manufactures custom-made products, getting one order of a project takes a great deal of experiences and knowledge. What Nichinan Seiki needs for the future is to create an organization of experienced employees where the younger employees can learn the skills and get trained so Nichinan Seiki as a company could always provide high quality specifications that satisfy our customers.

I want them to feel fun for their work

I once said “it would take five years to pass on my knowledge to new employees”. Then one of my clients replied to me “that’s your standards”. Of course, there might be some employees who could learn it in three years, maybe even in one year if they really try it hard. Some people might need a long time, then I think they are not suited for the work. What Nichinan Seiki is looking for in terms of human resources is those who are motivated to learn the technologies in a short period of time, and the company itself needs to have this way of thinking.

I was a programmer before I became a managing director. I took orders from customers, created the programs, then delivered them to the customers. Our company never manufactures the same product. We contribute to our customers by making proposals, creating the products then judging whether the products are good or bad. This is how I got the first-hand experience and found that it was a very fun moment of my work. I also find it very interesting when I create a product such that somebody points out “This is the product Mr. Yano has created, isn’t it?”, “Is this Nichinan Seiki’s product?”. I don’t think you can learn your work if you do not enjoy it, so I’m hoping the young employees will find out that our work is very interesting. I believe Nichinan Seiki can provide them with such experiences.

We are planning to expand our business globally by promoting our original models of Nichinan Seiki’s brand based on our accumulated experiences. In order to achieve our objective, Nichinan Seiki as a company will try to create “Nihcinan Seiki Model” where we can improve the technical standard within the company and pass it on.

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Next entry is coming soon!