What a machine sitting in the dark tells you

“Bon” holiday season is over in japan.

For those who don’t know, Bon is a one-week holiday in the middle of August when the spirits of our ancestors are believed to come back to our world.

Right before the holiday is when you can see our factory full of machines ready to be delivered.

The picture above is of a corrugator doublefacer for a Japanese customer.

Before shipping it out, we had the customer over for pre-shipment check-up.

“Not to mention the machine is great, what impressed me the most is the way your people relate to us, and how committed they are to making good machines”, says the customer.

Talking to them, I was thinking back to the time I had just joined the company.

Back then, assembly was always behind the schedule.

Shipment date was approaching, but machines were far from ready.

Some of us would even have to pull an all-nighter getting the machine ready for shipment.

This was so common back in the day that nobody didn’t even seem to care.

Then I started corporate cultural reform.

Fortunately, I haven’t seen it in a long time now. If you go to our shop past 5pm, it’s likely lights are all out and no one is there, just like when I went to take the picture above.

This is not because we don’t have as many orders as we used to. As a matter of fact, we have been at the full capacity for many years.

Yet we’ve become able to make better machines more stably and more quickly.   

Corporate culture may seem to have nothing to do with machine assembly.

But, believe it nor not, it’s what made this all possible.