HIDA Journal 2015 AUTUMN No.7

11/18

No.7 AUTUMN 2015　9staff in the extremely short time period of less than five months. Speaking from past experience, the quickest way to instill skills in people is to have them disassemble completed goods to get them to understand the process of putting together a bag, then get them to sew the disassembled bag back together again to completion. We had them do this again and again and evaluated and offered guidance regarding the positive and negative points. Sewing leather puts holes in it, so it can’t be resewn. Ethiopian sheep skin in particular is soft and stretches, so it requires careful and delicate techniques. Moreover, the quality of the product depends on how delicately it can be produced down to its ne details, and the level of attention, so we guided them to place emphasis on these points. During the guidance period we had them make more than 30 sample goods, until they could make them nearly identical to how they were guided. It is absolutely crucial that we avoid complaints and claims, such as having bags made in Ethiopia returned. Since defective goods are associated with trust problems for our company, even for the sample goods we check everything down to the fine details and remain uncompromising. The guidance was given patiently and with great attention to detail in English and a little in Amharic with the use of specification documents from Japan that contain pictures. It is important to have them do it themselves, show them what they did right and what they did wrong, and then have them do it again. What sorts of things did you have to pay attention to when guiding the Ethiopians? I made a special effort to communicate with the staff as much as possible, such as by always greeting them, striking up conversations, and telling them jokes to get them to laugh. Also, when they did a good job I praised them and explained what went wrong when they didn’t do a good job, and with goods that they didn’t do a good job on I would ask them if they themselves would accept them. If they would accept them then they were ne as they were, but if they would not then I had them think for themselves about what should be done. As a result, most of the people elected to redo them on their own. Moreover, while this doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone in every country, understanding the main points and explaining them to people yourself can get the local people to open up to you. I have a long record of overseas experience in South Korea and China, where I felt the same way. How was the additional guidance* carried out? Additional guidance was provided at a vocational training school for promoting the leather industry in Ethiopia called the Leather Industry Development Institute (LIDI). The teachers were given advice on capital investments concerning sewing machines and instruction on sewing machine maintenance (how to eliminate defects from needles, how to put the settings, etc.), while the students were asked to make products like passport covers by remaking practice patterns for sewing on a sewing machine and given advice on what they did right and what they did wrong in their sewing. In fact, Hiroki Addis interviewed 70 students from LIDI, from which it chose the best 26 to hire as employees. So this additional guidance posed a win-win for LIDI and Hiroki Addis. ＊ Instruction and advice provided to local companies and the like that have business ties with the company receiving an expert, given when the share of the contribution on the Japanese side for the company receiving the expert is 50% or more.Finally, please tell us about your challenges and ambitions for doing business in Ethiopia in the future. Hiroki Addis is the first expansion into Ethiopia by a Japanese company since the current regime, which came about as a result of the constitutional reforms of 1995, and it is currently the only Japanese-affiliated company in the local region. What is more, the Ethiopian government regards the leather industry as a major industry and a growth area. But since high added-value products of processed leather are not being produced, the local government has extremely high hopes for Hiroki Addis. We would like to contribute to Ethiopian society by means of increasing employment and by allowing young people to be self-reliant. This is to be done by transferring manufacturing techniques for handbags and clothing made from Ethiopian sheep skin cultivated in Japan and China to Ethiopia and achieving exports of high value-added products, which is a challenge for the local region. The source of Hiroki Addis’ continued growth is truly to be found in continuous HR development. I feel that HIDA will come to play an increasingly important role in this, so I would like to ask for your continued support.Thank you very much for this invaluable discussion. Additional guidance at LIDI (checking the sewingImage of the manufacturing of the bags (cutting the leather)ODA-funded Programs

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