HIDA JOURNAL 2014 SPRING No.4

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12 HIDA JOURNALprestigious and fashionable departmental store in England - Liberty of London in Regent Street, due to these disciplines. I recall with joy how my wife and I felt when we saw a young Japanese lady adding on several of the fabric toys made by us to her shopping basket at the Liberty Sales outlet of the prestigious Selfridges Store in Oxford Street London. It was a long journey for us and it all started undoubtedly at the EPCM lecture room!Among many Japanese management concepts I introduced in our company was Hoshin Kanri discipline. We began focusing on shared goals. We took the following steps in:• Communicating our goal to all our work leaders• Involved all the leaders in planning and achieving the goal• Encouraged all participants to be accountable for achieving their part of the goalSimilarly the Kaizen approach we introduced in our business along with the Hoshin Kanri discipline began to produce amazing results. Our Japanese buyers paid more and more confidence in our management philosophy. I am proud to state that our corporate philosophy helped us in winning the supply contracts for Hanshin Tigers and Kansai Airport. These relationships had a positive impact on our business due to our corporate philosophy.All my learning from the EPCM programme fast became a way of life for me. In the year 2003 when I took over a challenging overseas assignment in Jordan to set up and manage an International Company engaged in manufacture of clothing for a leading USA brand it was rather amazing the way I had to be dependent on what I learnt in the EPCM lecture room. We managed a resident work team of 2800 persons who came to work from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. In view of their cultural diversity, HR policies had to be fine-tuned to apply to each nationality. Reverting back to some basic principles of HR we learnt, helped me in this task. I was able to persuade our teams to implement many Japanese Management Principles in our production floor and in quality assurance tasks.We maintained these disciplines until our containers left the shores of Jordan.My most gratifying thoughts of HIDA, Professor Yahagi and my EPCM curriculum came to play when I commenced my own business for the second time, located in a foreign land – Jordan, in the year 2010. It is a business engaged in importing and marketing Ceylon Tea and processed sea food. In our marketing discussions in the EPCM programme we debated on the importance of brand names and franchising. I too created my own brand name “Fresh& Best” in this enterprise whch is now a popular brand name in Jordan. The value of what I learnt and what I observed in the Japanese organizations I visited, confirmed some blunt realities and challenges when I started this business. The processed frozen sea food business I embarked on was a high risk one. It was resting on one clear lesson that I learnt. I realized that the quality management is focused not only on the product but also on the process in which it is achieved. I also learnt that quality management therefore has to use quality assurance and quality control processes. Raw material integrity was the key factor in our logistics chain to achieve consistent quality. For us establishing and maintaining the programme of quality right through our process is an essential criteria. We have to maintain stringent quality control from the point at which sea food is caught in mid sea by our suppliers, storage and freezing in cold storages, in-plant processing and finally till the product reaches the cold room of the end buyers. I first observed the practice of this need when I visited Japanese companies during the EPCM programme. I have to confess that till such time I was rather naïve to this need. Today we have also extended this learning process we gained at the EPCM encounter to our logistic centers in Vietnam, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.This experience confirmed to me what HIDA and Professor Yahagi had been advocating to all EPCM participants that “Life long learning, therefore, is essential for top executives and entrepreneurs to improve their management capabilities.”Considering all what I have gained personally by this programme, I was delighted when I was invited by HIDA to join the seminar conducted by Professor Yahagi on “Japanese Management Today and Tomorrow”, in commemoration of the opening of the HIDA office in New Delhi on 30 October 2013. Opportunity of meeting Professor Yahagi after several years was indeed a great pleasure to me. The seminar content was chosen with great care by Professor Yahagi using his inimitable style covering areas such as (a) Japan today and tomorrow (b) Lost 20 years; what to do tomorrow (c) Entrepreneurship in Japan and India.Professor Yahagi’s explanation on Hon Prime Minister Abe’s ‘Abenomics’ covering radical changes in monetary policy, significant fiscal stimulus policy and growth strategy to stimulate private investments by energizing private entrepreneurship was clearly explained at this seminar.At the end of the seminar after listening to Professor Yahagi, I left the auditorium asking myself another question - am I a Necessity Driven Entrepreneur or an Improvement Driven Opportunity Entrepreneur?Final highlight of the day in New Delhi was the inauguration of HIDA-EPCM Club; a web based virtual learning space. There were 6 ex – EPCM members from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka that participated at the inauguration meeting chaired by Professor Yahagi who explained to the participants the objective of the HIDA- EPCM Club. As an ex-EPCM participant I am indeed Dr. Yahagi on the left and Mr. Athulla R. F. Edirisinghe on the right

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