Let your people take care of your business

At the beginning of May, we have one of the biggest holidays in Japan.
Right before those holidays, our shop usually gets full of machines to be shipped out.
In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year was not an exception.

One of those machines was newly-developed one.
As the ship-out date approached, the project team decided to divide themselves into two groups, and start working in shifts so that they could work on the machine literally all-day.

I honestly didn’t know if it was a good idea.

The machine looked good enough to me, and I was concerned about their health. I had to worry about their families as well, especially since some of them have a baby at home.

So we talked, but they were so insistent and determined to deliver a machine in the best possible shape.

After a week of working in shifts, the machine was shipped out, and now the machine has started running at the customer site.
Because of their pre-installation efforts, things are going well.

It’s just like how they say, as a leader, a part of your job is to let your people do what they are really passionate about, and they will take care your business.

Now that the machine has almost been taken care of, hopefully they will come back to their families soon!

Essential Business Amid Pandemic

Hope everyone reading this is doing fine during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These days, we hear a lot about essential businesses/non-essential businesses.
Essential businesses refer to ones that our day-to-day lives rely too much on, such as banks, hospitals and supermarkets etc.

Corrugated industry is not as obvious, but it certainly plays an essential role in delivering things to people in need.

As a matter of fact, corrugated box manufacturers have been designated as an essential business.
And if they are essential businesses, we are too.


As in many other countries, the state of emergency has been declared in Japan.
Some of us had already started working remotely before all this happened.
Fortunately, 80% of our people drive to work, and that makes social distancing easier for us than most of Japanese people who commute in a packed train.
We are taking a lot more measures so that none of us will be infected.


The pandemic has damaged the economy in many parts of the world.
If you look at the corrugated industry, as people spend more time at home, the demand for corrugated boxes for certain items has increased.

That is why we have to make sure that their machines keep running.  We have urgent repair works at customers that cannot be postponed.

On the other hand, we’ve got some of the overseas installations on hold. We do appreciate your patience.
We will do everything we can to balance our own safety and support for our customers.

Hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Till then, please stay safe.

New Machine Being Installed!

When I put a picture of a machine here, it’s normally our machine. But not this time.

We’ve purchased a multi-tasking machine made by Mazak, one of the biggest machine tools manufactures in Japan, and the installation work is well underway.

I was impressed with the machine itself, but what surprised me more was how many of us were there.

Although it was a holiday, there were a lot of our people who were excited and curious enough to come see it.

Even a Mazak’s sales person told me that she’d never seen this many people at one installation.

Another picture with soon-to-be operators of this machine.

Our corrugating machines consist of tens of thousands of parts.

It’s those parts’ quality that eventually determines the quality of the final product.

Although it might be almost invisible, I believe this investment will make a difference for our customers!

Milestone Recognition

Like I mentioned before, 2020 is ISOWA’s 100th anniversary. We have a lot of exciting anniversary events coming up.

As a part of it, we’re making a short film for milestone recognition at AICC, The Independent Packaging Association.

 

It’s such an honor to be celebrated as one of the few companies that have served in the corrugating industry for a hundred years.

We started off as a small local engineering shop. I’m not even sure if we can call it a machine that we made then, but one thing that I’m sure of is that we wouldn’t be here without it.

I would love to tell more of our stories here, but I think I should save it for the AICC gathering.

I hope as many of you reading this as possible will be there to celebrate together!

Happy New Year 2020

Happy belated New Year! I hope 2020 is treating you all well.

I’d like to have a quick look back at what happened at the turn of the year at ISOWA.

Santa Claus came to ISOWA! This is the first Santa Claus I’ve ever seen at the office.

Some people were just surprised and didn’t know what to do. Others were so excited that they asked him to take a selfie. At least we all had a little good time.

Thanks for the surprise visit!

Now this is something more customary.

Every year we celebrate our people who have turned 20. In Japan, when you turn 20, you are legally recognized as an adult.

Good luck with your new stage of life!

Lastly, I received Business Person Award hosted by a Japanese newspaper company.

I’m so honored, but I couldn’t have done it by myself. I’d like to dedicate this award to my team, my family and everyone that has been a part of my life.

We’re certainly getting off to a good start.

Hope I’ll be seeing as many of you reading this as possible this year!

Guests from the US

Some of you might recognize one of the guys in the picture.
The third person from the left is an ISOWA America’s service manager.
He and his family came to Japan for vacation.

He’s from Idaho US, and has been working with us for 33 years.
He joined the company one year after I did.


Back in the days, we would hire local engineers for overseas machine installations, and he was one of them.

He had lived in Japan, and spoke perfect Japanese. Naturally he caught the eye of my father who was spearheading our growth in the US market at the time.


Since then, he has always been such an important part of ISOWA America. 

His Japanese skills, friendly personality and hard work.
These are without doubt what have made ISOWA America as successful as we are now.


And through all these years, it was always his dream to take his family to Japan and show them around ISOWA.

Look at their smiles! I’m glad his dream has come true.

I hope his family had fun in Japan and will come back again!

First time in 5 years

I visited Brazil for the first time in 5 years.

I wasn’t really excited about the flights that were almost 24 hours one way, but It’s always a great pleasure to see customers on the opposite side of the Earth.

One of the customers we visited purchased our Flexo Folder Gluer “Falcon” this April.

We’ve only worked together for a little over 6 months, but they’re operating the machine really well as if they have been for a long time! 

We’re so glad our machine can be a part of the company’s growth in the years ahead.

Another customer, in contrast, has been a customer of ours for a few decades now. 

From a new machine that was installed 2 years ago, 

To a more than 25-year-old machine, they’re using a wide range of machines from different generations.

The owner of the company told me, “Our partnership started in our father’s generation. It will surely be passed down to our sons one day”.

There’s nothing like having a customer like that in the farthest place in the world.

New partnership that has just begun, and the long-term one that I hope will continue for many more generations to come.

It was absolutely worth the painful flights!

x