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

This blog entry introduces Nichinan Seiki’s CEO, ADACHI Yuji through an in-house interview. Please read through and find out his thoughts for his employees and how he thinks the company should be.

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Everything is custom-made to solve your problems.

Nichinan Seiki was established in 1985 and had involved in supporting FA (Factory Automation) and LA (Laboratory Automation) of corporates. As we merged with a software company in May 2011, we had a fresh start as a company of mechanism and software.

To put it simply, our company builds production lines for corporates including the inspection machines to check the finished products, and all other machines involved in the production line are custom-made. We take orders as one complete system and create necessary machines from scratch, so we do not have catalogs for our products. We hear what our customers need,  such as the automation of FA and LA, then design a production line based on the specification thus all the parts are custom-made.

I cannot tell the names of the corporates as we have signed on non-disclosure agreements, however more than 99% of our clients are listed companies including automotive companies. We also take orders from medical companies and energy related companies in recent years.

Always thinking to improve and moving onto the next project.

All the products manufactured at Nichinan Seiki are always custom-made. Since we do not do the same thing, we use our brain every time. Long projects take 8 to 10 months from an order to delivery, thus there are always possibilities that we might encounter unexpected troubles. We must improve our technical skills and quality to solve the troubles as soon as possible. Even though the projects go smoothly without much trouble, I tell my employees “always keep thinking of what could be improved while working on the next project.”

If I give a score to the current state of the company, I would give 70 points. I guess it sounds fine. I think the employees are working very hard and doing their work with the best of intentions. To improve the score from here, we must keep trying to improve the technical skills and quality, and work while continuously thinking about improvements.

To work hard, happily and safely.

“Work hard and play hard” is Nichinan Seiki’s way of thinking, and my motto. You cannot enjoy your work if you cannot draw a line between work and private. I think the employees have different perspectives on how rewarding the work is for each of them, thus the balance between work and private is very important. During the busiest time of the year, we sometimes have to work on five projects at the same time, so we make sure to take safety measures by placing all the things in a right place and keeping the factories tidy and in order. Nichinan Seiki has acquired ISO9000 and Eco Action 21 certifications. We need to manage human resources, goods and money based on them, so at the end of each fiscal year we try to inquire each department about things and information they need, hold a meeting with the executives, and provide information on what is necessary for the next fiscal year so the employees can improve their skills for the coming year.

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Thank you for taking the time to read through the interview.

The second part of the interview with the CEO will be on the next blog entry. Please look forward to it.