Thank You To Families!

This week, the major matter of conversation at office has been weather.

“Seems like the weather will hold.”

“They said it’d be raining.”

“Latest forecast says it’s going to be cloudy!”

It’s been a week of the jitters.

We had a good reason.

Today is the day of ISOWA family open house for the first time in 5 years.

This is what the layout looks like.

And this is today’s time table.

80 staffs have been putting a lot of effort into planning and preparing.

Obviously, their passion blew the rain away. Although it was raining in many parts of Japan, by some miracle, here in Nagoya, the sun sometimes even showed itself from behind the clouds.

In such a condition, we had 600 guests in total.

There has been so much for family open house.

I wish I could talk about everything.

The theme this time was “appreciation”.

The project members set this theme in hope we could convey a message of appreciation to our families.

That is so us.

I’ve been looking forward to getting to thank them face to face.

How has his family been doing over past the five years?

What do their partners that they married five years ago look like?

How big have their children got?

With excitement, I welcomed the guests at reception, and walked around to convey a message.

Of course it’s not that easy to thank them enough, but I felt I had to tell their father, mother, husband, wife, children and grandchildren.

“They’ve always supported us even when we had to ask for too much.

I’d like to apologize we’ve taken a lot of their time with their families, and thank you for being cooperative.”

And I also want to tell those who weren’t there today.

Every single word you give us is treasure for ISOWA to go on.

“Work for myself and for my beloved family.”

I promise we will do our utmost to realize this belief.

Please walk with us.

And finally, I would like to say a thank you from the heart to all of our staff who has spent a lot of their time and energy to make it successful. Thank you very much.

Shape Our Dream

Last Friday, 21st was an unforgettable day.

I’m going to tell you what happened that day.

We decided to have a morning assembly that was not scheduled.

That’s because, the day before, “i Machine” that we’ve been working on for 2 years was finally completed, and the customer who bought it came to our factory for pre-delivery inspection. 

What I really wanted everyone to know was something that happened during their visit.

Our conventional machine sometimes have to put operators in danger.

Although most of them are minor injuries so that they didn’t even have to go to hospital, the frequency of injuries always bothers operators and manegement. 

Mr. H, one of the ‘i Machine’ project members, has been developing with a dream to reduce the risk. 

There were a lot of technical and cost issues to overcome.

He’s invested a lot of energy and passion with this machine.

It was highly valued by the customer.

We want to create a machine that won’t suddenly break down or stop.

We’d like to offer safety, relief, productivity, quality, reliability, and someday happiness.

We’ve been trying to complete “i machine” that embodies our belief and will be loved by customers.

We could finally realized our belief, and, most importantly, it satisfied the customer.

I wanted those who were not there to know that story.

Then Mr. M started speaking about the same episode, of course without any prior consultation.

Moreover, Mr. H, another project member picked up that subject at the group gathering, too.

“It was the happiest moment for me, too.”

This is exactly what I’m talking about.

Speak to the employees.

E-mail them.

Make a slogan and hang it on the wall.

A company does a lot of things to infiltrate their policy through the whole company.

What really matters is not taking many actions, but sharing thoughts and moving towards the same direction together.

I don’t like the word, “infiltration”. It sounds one-sided.

Or rather I want to feel and act together with my workmates, which is essential to be as one.

That’s what a team is all about.

If we hadn’t had togetherness, the three of us couldn’t have felt the same way.

But we did and so did the customer.

This is the very first step of ISOWA’s i Machine.

We will creat real value to cutomers as we reform our corporate culture.

Our change is now underway.

Thank you for working for ISOWA!

We commended our long time employees at today’s morning assembly.

First of all, Mr. F and Mr. I in the above picture, Mr. K who’s away on business and Mrs. U of Tokyo office.They’ve been working for us for 40 years.

They are all the same age as me.

Until the last year, 40 year-employees had been older thanI was.

But finally we’re all of an age.

Mr. H, Mr. Y and Mrs. F from ISOWA HOOPERSWIFT, 30 year-employees.

20 year- employees make me look like someone who just got drafted.

Mr. U, Mr. Ko, Mr. T, Mr. M and Mr. Ka.

Mrs. K who’s in her 10th year here.

In spite of the fact that she has worked for 10 years, she still looks young…

Mr. H and Mr. O who just turned 20.

I look like a short man between them.

Mr. Y was commended not as a long time employee but for advanced suggestions for improvement.

We gave them time to say a few words.

“Without my family and colleagues, I wouldn’t be here.”

“For talent training, I’ll give my knowledge to only two people in order of arrival.”

“I’m so glad to be a part of this warm company.”

　

“There is much more I want to do.”

“Tomorrow I’ll be bigger than who I am today.”

Everyone was amazing. I hope more staffs tell their storyto us like this.

I thought “just for today...” and decided to make them do it, which eventually left no time for my speech.

But I believe those stories were worthier listening to than my speech.

I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been a part of ISOWA.

And I hope ISOWA will have more long time employees in the future.