HIDAJournal 2012 AUTUMN

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13HIDA Journal No. 1 ● AUTUMN 2012THAI HI-DAKA is located in the Saharat-tananakorn Industrial Estate, north of Ayutthaya. This particu-lar industrial estate was the first to suffer dam-age in last year’s floods. Our factory was covered in flood waters for about a two month period. Every year the area around the industrial estate and its rice paddies flooded a little, but this time the water reached a depth of three meters. Our first floor was completely submerged. This is why we suffered a large amount of damage to our ma-chinery.Normally it would take several months to restore operations after this type of damage, but we had to rush our recovery effort this time. This is because demand for curtain rails in Japan reaches its peak between February and March during the new home season. The floods could not be used an excuse. If we could not fulfill orders during this time we would lose a large number of customers. As a result, we decided to take a risk and purchase all new equipment before the appraisal was conducted by the property insurance company. This enabled us to restart opera-tions at the end of January 2012. The other things that enabled us to restart production so quickly were financial assistance from our head office and the support of those parties we have worked with in Japan and Thailand. In par-ticular, we received a great deal of help from our plant manager’s personal network of Thais. I am really thankful of this. By March 2012, we were able to restore production capacity to about 90% of normal before the floods. Incidentally, we are still waiting for the insurance appraisal to be conducted, but this has only had a small impact on our production activities. Since we were able to quickly restore operations after the floods, we have now begun human resource development in order to strengthen our competitiveness, which is an issue we were pur-suing prior to the floods. This industry is exposed to intense price competition. This is why reducing the development cost of new products is a critical issue for us. We are now using HIDA ex-perts dispatch program to train human resources that can design curtain rails and other products. In conjunction with this, we also plan to reduce costs and improve productivity by having an ex-pert help us revise our production management system and qual-ity control system.We suffered ex-tensive damage in these floods, but thanks to the as-sistance and hard work of many people we were able to move for-ward. For that I am very thankful.[THAI HIDAKA CO., LTD.]Location: Ayutthaya Province, Thailand (Saharattananakorn Industrial Estate)Established: April 1991Capital: THB 15 millionEmployees: 32 (as of July 31, 2012)Description of business: Manufacture and sales of curtain rails and picture rails, etc.Managing Director Uemura (left) and dispatched expert MurakamiMajor industrial estates around Bangkok (x means an industrial estate damaged in the floods)Inside the restored factory where it looks the same as before the floodsEquipment waiting for an appraisal for insurance purposes Saharattananakorn Industrial EstateTHAI HIDAKA CO., LTD.Managing Director Takashi Uemura

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