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ISOWA NEWS LETTER
2019/09 Vol. 125
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The 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 the ISOWA NEWS LETTER will help you feel closer to us.
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1├Life of an ISOWA Senior Sales Employee
2├What a machine sitting in the dark tells you
From President Isowa’s Blog, ISOWA DIARY
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Hello All, this is Kaiser Hagopian, and I am with Isowa America
in Phoenix, Arizona.
September is upon us in the desert, and that means that we are near
the end of our annual monsoon season in Arizona, which brings high humidity,
lightning, blowing dust, and flash floods.
The season officially begins on June 15 and lasts through September,
and I think August being the most active month.
The word monsoon originates from the Arabic word Mausim, which
means “season” or “wind shift,” and it can create short intense periods
of rain. In speaking with customers, most believe our summers are
a “dry” heat, and this is true for May and June, but from July – September
the relative humidity can exceed 40% making our weather a little uncomfortable.
You won’t see me on one of our beautiful golf courses during this time
with temperatures regularly above 110 F (43 C)!
The rains that the monsoon create help recharge the groundwater and
in approximately half the state — get half of their annual rainfall
during monsoon season. The most rain falls in the mountains.
These rains can create fast-moving water that can wipe out trees
and trails, damage vegetation, and move even large boulders.
It’s important to be especially cautious during this season because
flash floods can have tragic consequences.
Almost weekly you see on the news people being rescued by emergency
services, and sometimes they are being rescued by a helicopter!
The monsoon also brings beautiful lightning shows at night.
It is approximated that there are 500,000 lightning strikes during a season.
These can be dangerous too with dry vegetation causing brush or forest fires.
One of my favorite memories growing up here was sitting on our family
porch with my parents and enjoying the nightly lighting show.
So the next time you think of visiting the Phoenix area, please stop
by for a visit. We have air conditioning!
And now, let’s turn to Vol. 125 of the ISOWA NEWS LETTER.
We hope you like this edition.
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Life of an ISOWA Senior Sales Employee
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Hello, everyone.
This is Fujikawa of Customer Support/Service Department who will turn 64
this September.
I joined ISOWA to work in sales in December of 1991, at the age of 36,
and I have been working at the Tokyo Domestic Sales Office since then.
I joined the company as a mid-career hire without any technical knowledge.
Therefore, after joining the company, I spent some time learning the fundamentals
of sales, and I also went on-site and helped with service support,
and learned about the models, functions, and structures of machines.
I am still working at ISOWA today, even though I reached my retirement
age four years ago.
Of course, I still visit our customers and engage in sales activities,
and my attitude of wanting to help them has not changed, even after
my age of retirement.
However, I think that my work style has changed.
In this issue, called “Life of a Senior Sales Employee,”
I will tell you about my work style.
Sales & Service Visit
I engage in Sales & Service Visit to visit customers whom salespersons
haven’t been able to visit in a while for sales calls.
I make the best use of my experience and knowledge from the past 27 years
of my life at ISOWA to:
・ ask customers about the status of their machines (productivity, quality, safety)
・ provide proposals for repairs and modifications to machines
When customers have machines which are not well maintained and
not in perfect/proper condition, I provide advice for simple machine
repair methods to customers whose operators are having difficulties,
and I explain those problems to managers and receive requests for part orders
and repairs. I started this because I had the passion to help our customers
by improving the productivity and quality of our machines. However,
Thanks to the skills that I acquired back then, I think I am able to be of
some assistance to our customers.
In a single year, I visited approximately 40 companies.
I will tell you about some examples of my actual experiences below.
・Dealing with machine problems
During visits, I noticed that some machines operate while having
some sort of problem. There were many customers who had problems
concerning sheet transfer, printing, and creasing.
For such problems, I indicated the respective causes, of feed roll wear,
anilox roll wear or clogging, and creaser urethane wear.
There are customers who improved their productivity and quality, so I felt that
I was of some assistance to them.
・Improvement of maintainability
There are quite a few machines that are currently operating with the
electric components that are discontinued or no longer serviced by the manufacturers.
The services of ISOWA also provide updated information for upgrading
electrical components.
During such activities, I assisted the customers that I visited during my door-to-door
service and acted as a point of contact from making initial proposals, and took
orders for replacements of electrical components.
Malfunction of discontinued parts may pose a high risk of long-term suspension
of machine operation. Therefore, I would regularly make suggestions to customers
to maintain safe and satisfactory machines for a long period of time.
Some of the customers that I actually visited had the followings to say:
・ Fujikawa, we’re glad to see you working energetically after your retirement age.
・ We are thankful that our machines are inspected with the expertise of the manufacturer.
・ We are thankful that Fujikawa explains the problems of our workplace to management in a detailed manner.
・ Maintenance of the machines has made our work easier.
・ Please come again.
Such words of immense appreciation help motivate me in my work.
Sales work support
・ Duties at ISOWA
In recent years, I have retired from the front line, not leaving the office
as much as I did in the past, and now I spend most of my time in the office.
Therefore, when I am at the office, I do the paperwork for other salespeople who
are out of the office on sales calls.
I primarily do work on a computer, and I can perform my duties without
any problems in particular. I fondly remember when the younger staff members,
who were like children to me, used to stare at me as I asked the same computer
questions over and over. (haha)
I entrust work to others and accept work that is entrusted to me.
I work in a flexible way at ISOWA.
Also, I can now use Keynote, an iPad application for making presentations,
to make simple presentations, and I use them during meetings.
Eventually, I would like to give my own presentations for machines at customer sites,
but I am not sure when that would be.
・ OJT for young salespeople
I think that transmitting my 27 years of experience thus far to new employees
is my work, to put it in a cool way, my mission. I would be delighted
if I could accompany young salespersons and they could learn something
from my footsteps, and meet as many future milestones as possible.
However, I am troubled about the generational gap on a daily basis,
because they’re even younger than my children. I do not mean to say that
these young people are naive, but there are situations in which I become keenly
aware of how the times have changed.
The future
I fondly remember, when I joined ISOWA back in 1991, that I was absorbed
in my work, and that I wanted to catch up with and surpass the senior employees
as quickly as possible. However, ISOWA has changed a lot over this
last quarter of a century.
One example is the improvement of our corporate culture, which breaks
down the walls between departments to enable easy communication between
all members of the company, and aims for us to be the company with the best
corporate culture in the world.
Initially, I had my doubts about whether or not this change would work.
However, as the improvement in corporate culture progresses, I feel that
the company atmosphere has become brighter and that the growth of
younger employees has accelerated dramatically.
Going forward, I would like to do my best to contribute to creating an even
brighter corporate culture, where employees don’t feel that there are
any problems caused by the senior staff, in order to help our customers,
so I look forward to continuing to work with all of you.
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What a machine sitting in the dark tells you
From President Isowa’s Blog, ISOWA DIARY
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“Bon” holiday season is over in Japan.
▼To read more about it, visit the below website
(President Isowa’s blog, ISOWA DIARY)
http://h-isowa.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-machine-sitting-in-dark-tells-you.html
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