HIDAJournal 2012 AUTUMN

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7HIDA Journal No. 1 ● AUTUMN 2012Next, we had everyone come to work during the daytime shift. During this shift, I had some of our employees help implement the 5S process (Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke)* inside the factory. Prior to the move, we had placed emphasis on the 5S, but due to the forceful schedule of our move and the ensuing commotion, our employees lost some of their focus. *arranging, organizing, cleaning, standard-izing, disciplineThat was a very daring decision. Last year you began using JODC’s (currently HIDA) Experts Dispatch Program for the first time. Can you tell us about your experience?Yes, we hosted one expert from Japan in conjunction with the launch of our design division last year. Conventionally, we had performed all design work in Japan, but we had reached a capacity in recent years due to the rising number of orders and increasingly shorter delivery times. As a result, we decided to use the Experts Dispatch Program in order to cultivate leaders for this design division since we were going to move some design work to NAMBU CYL (THAILAND). The expert spent about seven months with us from July 2011 to January 2012. The expert instructed two of our mid-career hires on design and design-related knowledge using two dimensional CAD.Have you been able to achieve satisfying results?The two mid-career hires had basic knowledge and an employee from our head office had traveled to Thailand to accurately measure their abilities. This enabled the expert to narrow the scope of instruction. In addition, the expert from Japan had the time to sit down and carefully instruct both employees for a long period of time, we were able to achieve the results we had wanted. I am very satisfied with the results. Incidentally, these two employees have been cultivated to the point that we now plan to hire a new university graduate whom we will develop as a third member of the team. It takes a great deal of effort to develop a university graduate intoa con-tributing member of the team. However, since a new graduate does not have the habits of a mid-career hire, I believe over the long-term it is more advantageous to train a university graduate.Did you ever think of conducting training in Japan?I believe it would be important to send a trainee to Japan if the purpose was to help them better understand Japanese thought processes, but in this case we did not particularly require this. I say this because I do not think that everything has to be according to the way it is done in Japan. In other words, I believe there is a Thai work style best suited to Thai workers. Are you practicing anything special inside the company?It is essential for the design division to communicate with the production floor. Yet if nothing is done about this, people working in the office do not have the opportunity to interact with people working on the production floor. As such, we have our people working in the office go out for about 30 minutes to one hour to interact with people on the production floor after the start of operations each day. This is a requirement of all of our office staff, including female workers involved in administrative or accounting work. That is a very unique approach.Everyone says this. I am not sure if this is directly related to this change, but the atmosphere inside the company has become more friendly and cheerful. I also believe that the way our employees think about the company has also changed. The biggest change is that employees are now more willing to help out when the company is facing a problem. For example, when we relocated the factory in May, all of our employees helped out even though the move took place on a weekend. This may be the norm in Japan, but in Thailand it is a very rare occurrence. Typically about half of the employees do not want to work on weekends in other companies.Although I have yet to make a close comparison, I also believe that our employee retention rate is higher than that in other companies as well.Tell us about your future ambitions.I believe there is ample opportunity to grow even more in Thailand. I hope to not only expand our current business, but also boldly tackle challenges found in surrounding fields using flexible thinking as our weapon. I would like to use HIDA programs for our human resource development needs. In this regard, I look forward to working with HIDA again.HIDA, too, looks forward to working with you. Thank you for your very informative discussion today.Inside the factory Design division and administrative / accounting staffA product

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