———————————————————————
ISOWA NEWS LETTER
2016/5/1 Vol. 85
———————————————————————
ISOWA NEWS LETTER is a newsletter for the benefit of special customers only. Each month we bring you information about our company and its products ― information you won’t find on our home page or in our catalogs. We hope ISOWA NEWS LETTER will help you feel closer to us.
Hi, everyone. I am Masato Isaji of ISOWA America.
I visited the White Sands National Monument in an area of huge sand dunes in New Mexico the other day. As I’d been told, the surrounding area of bright white sand gave the illusion of being in a snowfield. They say that the sand is white because it is made from gypsum crystals.
While exploring the park, a 15-meter-high sand dune came into view and I wondered what the view would be like from the top. After running up the dune and gasping for breath, dazzling white sand dunes stretched out to the horizon as far as the eye can see. It was no surprise that the area of these white sand dunes is greater than the City of Tokyo (626.70 km2).
If you get the chance, I recommend you to visit New Mexico to experience the magnificence of nature.
And now, let’s turn to Vol. 85 of the ISOWA NEWS LETTER.
We hope you like this edition.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Thoughts of ISOWA America on installing machines
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hello everyone, I am Yuto Aoki of ISOWA America (IA).
This time I’d like to talk about the installation of new flexo folder gluer machines, particularly in the North America region under the jurisdiction of IA.
Previously, to install a machine in North America, departments in Japan head office such as the Assembly Department, Electrical Engineering Department, and the Engineering Department dispatched installation personnel to perform the installation in the same way as an installation in Japan. But now IA faces the new challenge of handling such installations itself in this region.
I asked Ron, the president of IA, some questions about the installations that the company would be handling in the future.
– What do you think the most important thing for installation?
I think the most important thing for an installation is thorough preparation. This includes carefully understanding what the customer really needs going into the project, precise assembly and testing of the machine at our factory before shipment, proper training and planning for the installation team before they arrive at the customer’s site, and helping our customer prepare for the tasks they have to complete. We owe it to ourselves and our customers to be fully prepared to handle all tasks as safely, efficiently and accurately as possible. This will enable them to be extremely successful, not only for the installation but for many years following.
– What is the merit for us or customers that we install machines by ourselves in the U.S?
This is a very important question that I am glad you are asking. As the ISOWA America team grows, I believe it is a natural path for us to assume more responsibility for the installations in our region. We are taking this responsibility by driving organizational changes that support the greater goals of ISOWA, for the betterment of our people and our customers. When it comes to the installation process, this is a significant change over the past in which we followed the lead of team members from Japan. Now, we are stepping up to eventually lead these projects and that forces us to be better staffed, better skilled, better prepared, and more involved in the upstream design and assembly processes in Japan. This transition and the effort by every team member involved will translate into a stronger ISOWA team overall, and more specifically a stronger and smarter team at ISOWA America. The continuous develop of those skills and assets will allow us to serve our customers more timely and thoroughly in the future. One point I want to assure everyone is that WE ARE ISOWA. It does not matter if we are assigned to the corporate office in Japan, the office in Phoenix, or the office in Germany. When the day comes that we do complete an installation with ISOWA America members only, we will not be alone. The ISOWA team will always stand together, just as we do now, no matter who happens to be on site.
〇 How do you think about IA’s installations in the future, please tell me your enthusiasm at the last.
This is not a change just for the sake of change. It is a change of strategy, a change of preparation and a change of execution. ISOWA has a very good reputation for completing installations and getting our machines started up on schedule. We are going to build on that. I know it has been challenging for the team to rethink our business processes and plan for our future, but there are just so many opportunities in front of us how can we not be excited. To tell all the things that have started changing behind the scenes would take too much time, but changing who and how we complete new machine installations is just the tip of the iceberg and there is nothing but good things to follow. Easy? No. But well worth the effort!
Also Clay, the service manager says as follows.
We are looking forward to the future installations with enthusiasm and excitement. We are always looking for ways and Ideas to further improve our support to our customers. We enjoy working with our colleagues from Japan on every project and appreciate the training we receive in return. We will always appreciate our relationship with the MOTHER OFFICE. We just want to be able to help our customers on a more timely basis. We have a lot of customers that have profited greatly form the installations we have done so far and we are looking forwards to making that better.
From their interviews, I keenly felt the enthusiasm of these two people for their new challenge. It takes a lot of energy to take on a new task and there are bound to be a lot of insecurities and uncertainties along the way. However, even though IA is nominally doing the installations by itself, they will actually be handled as a companywide project by Team ISOWA in the typical ISOWA manner, making us excited to face more and more new challenges from now on! I was in charge of numerous installations in the past as part of the Electrical Engineering Department and I have worked on three FFG machine installations here in North America, so I want to make use of my experience in IA. I hope this will lead to machines and services that satisfy our customers in North America.
I hope you will continue to support IA as it continues to grow in the future!
———————————————————————-
Tales of ISOWA People, Continued
———————————————————————-
Behind every company, there is a product; in the shadow of every product, there is a person; within every person, there is a history. ISOWA People—the ISOWA employees who shaped ISOWA into the company that it is today.
From the End Point to a New Departure
Mr. Funahashi is now retired but can still be found actively working at the ISOWA plant. After retirement, the company asked him to come back because he had so much to teach younger staff members. He unhesitatingly replied that he’d go back to ISOWA if he could be useful. That was only six months after he retired. That’s how necessary he was deemed to be and also how necessary it was for him to work at ISOWA. Even now, he is entrusted with a variety of jobs and takes care of the new staff members. Once it seemed to have finished on retirement, but now his life at ISOWA looks like continuing for some time. It might be considered to be his new departure. Devoted to his lifetime of ISOWA work, Mr Funahashi is truly an ISOWA person.
———————————————————————-
Strategy Verbalizing Meeting
from President Isowa’s Blog, ISOWA DIARY
———————————————————————-
ISOWA’s strategy verbalizing meeting. It’s gotten into the 3rd round. The theme is how to realize our goal…
▼To read more about it, visit the below website (President Isowa’s blog, ISOWA DIARY)
http://h-isowa.blogspot.jp/2015/08/strategy-verbalizing-meeting.html
——————Copyright(C) 2009-2016 ISOWA Corporation—————–
ISOWA NEWS LETTER 