{"id":4341,"date":"2017-04-15T10:05:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T09:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zoomjapan.info\/?p=4341"},"modified":"2017-04-18T11:43:18","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T10:43:18","slug":"the-future-make-way-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/2017\/04\/15\/the-future-make-way-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"No50 [THE FUTURE] Make way for women!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Suwa Takako had to fight to impose her ideas, but she finally succeeded.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nSuwa Takako\u2019s success in a very masculine milieu has set a benchmark for women throughout Japan.<\/strong>
\nFor Suwa Takako, the decision to take her father\u2019s place was practically made for her. It all happened on a cold and rainy evening in April 2004. Suwa, then 32 years old, was called to the hospital. Her father Yasuo, founder and president of Daiya Seiki, a company specializing in the production of measurement machines for cars, had just been admitted to the emergency ward. The doctor told her that it was acute myeloid leukemia and that her father had only a few days left. Takako never really had time to weep about her father\u2019s situation though. At Daiya Seiki, located in Tokyo, about thirty people worked for important clients such as Nissan; it was crucial that her father\u2019s hospitalization did not stop this work. So her priority was to collate all the practical information she could, such as where the bank books and the safe-deposit box code were kept. The doctor\u2019s prognosis was correct and a few days later, Yasuo died. His daughter barely had time to say: \u201cDon\u2019t worry about the company!\u201d He was only 64 and had hoped that Takako would succeed him, but the decision wasn\u2019t an easy one for her, as in many people\u2019s eyes she was just a housewife. \u201cI thought about it for a month,\u201d she recalls. She was already married at the time and didn\u2019t need to earn a living. Furthermore, her husband was about to travel to the US for work. \u201cI wanted to go with him and learn English\u201d she admits. Having already worked as an engineer for two years at Hitachi Automotive Systems, a company making spare car parts, she already knew what it was like to be a female manager in this almost exclusively masculine milieu.
\nTo help make up her mind, she spoke with each and every one of the company\u2019s employees. She asked them: \u201cWould you go on working for the company if I were to become its CEO?\u201d and the oldest employee simply replied: \u201cWe want you to take over from Yasuo\u201d. She finally made the decision in May 2004, and became the new head of Daiya Seiki. Thirteen years later, she says she has never regretted that decision. However, Takako didn\u2019t take on her father\u2019s role without introducing some ideas of her own. She knew the company\u2019s strengths and weaknesses and her two years spent at Hitachi had also given her an opportunity to form her own ideas, telling us that \u201cWhat I learnt from that company, which is much larger than mine, was very useful\u201d. Her father had already asked her to work in the factory, which had given her the opportunity to formulate management plans, meaning she was far from being the mere \u201cborn yesterday housewife\u201d that many had thought.
\nIn spite of her experience and insight, her debut was overshadowed by problems with the employees and disagreements with the banks. To top it off, the factory\u2019s balance sheet hadn\u2019t moved since the financial bubble of the 1980s had burst. \u201cWe needed to reduce the payroll and cut costs,\u201d she recalls. After many sleepless nights, she decided to take the bull by the horns and sacked five people. Her father could never have done such a thing, due to the company\u2019s family friendly ethos. Though her actions led to feelings of mistrust between her and the team, they helped save the company, and it\u2019s economic outlook improved. \u201cThanks to Carlos Ghosn\u2019s reforms, the difficult situation for Nissan, one our main clients from my father\u2019s time, improved\u201d she explains. The recovery from this crisis allowed her to refuse a take-over bid that a bank had advised her to accept. The money men had prematurely judged that Takako would not be able to manage the company, and had encouraged her to merge with another firm.
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One of Suwa Takako’s priorities was to rejuvenate her team. Since 2007, the average age has dropped by 15 years.<\/figcaption><\/figure> Once the threat had been dealt with, she proceeded with other, more essential reforms. Her idea was to develop the same work-flow management systems that she had observed at Hitachi to manage areas such as cost and product quality, whilst making sure to maintain the factory\u2019s family friendly atmosphere. Today, she admits that she had a few difficulties making herself heard back then. Not only was she a woman, she was also younger than most of the employees. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t even want to sit round the meeting table,\u201d she remembers. However, the efficacy of Suwa Takako\u2019s choices proved correct, and criticism gradually disappeared. \u201cThey\u2019re very professional engineers. As soon as they see what works, they have no problem doing their best to improve the system,\u201d she says with admiration. Due to these shrewd decisions and the growth in demand linked to Nissan\u2019s recovery, by 2006, the company\u2019s operating profit had risen by 5% in the two years since she had succeeded her father.
\nIn 2007, Takako switched to the second tranche of her reforms, which involved rejuvenating the team and passing on skills to the younger generation. Since her father\u2019s time, Daiya Seiki had maintained a solid reputation with its customers. The production of the measurement machines they make, essential for the manufacture of cars, requires extreme precision, with some veteran factory employees are capable of hand making some devices to the exact micrometre. \u201cDo you know what that represents? A micrometer is the size of a particle of cigarette smoke. There are only five companies in Japan capable of doing what we do,\u201d she says proudly. At the time, the average age of the team was 53. An ageing workforce and problems of succession are common to many of the machikoba (small urban factories) such as Daiya Seiki, that were created between 1950 and 1960, so to attract younger employees, Takako emphasized Daiya Seiki\u2019s family atmosphere as its \u201cmain strength\u201d. She also created an internship and mentoring system for people with no experience, and tried to introduce mediation between the older and younger engineers. She even organized barbecues, to which the employees\u2019 families were invited. She claims that \u201ctoday our age pyramid is perfect. We\u2019ve recruited twenty people since 2007, which has lowered the average age to 38\u201d. Little by little, her exceptional career has attracted the media, who are on the lookout for a female manager who can act as a figurehead for the intention of Japanese society to break with old habits. In a country where the percentage of women managers remains around 10%, her career is a dream, and in 2012 she received the \u201cWoman of the year\u201d prize awarded by the magazine Nikkei Woman. \u201cI feel responsible for Japanese women who want to work in the same way as men, but can\u2019t. I have to continue being a role-model for them,\u201d she says. Since her award, Suwa Takako has attended around a hundred conferences per year. CEOs of machikoba threatened by international competition and problems of succession are desperate for her advice. \u201cThese companies are technologically strong, but they\u2019re not good at communication,\u201d she suggests. \u201cThe next decade will be crucial for the transmission of technological skills. These two factors are essential if these companies are to survive,\u201d she adds.
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The company\u2019s production rate has thrived since demand has recovered.<\/figcaption><\/figure> As for Daiya Seiki, the company is already exporting abroad to the United States, Mexico and China. For Suwa Takako, globalization is an opportunity to find more customers. Even Donald Trump\u2019s election to the White House has not dented her optimism, as when asked about the new American president\u2019s protectionism, she declares: \u201cIf he builds car factories in his country, it could be an opportunity for us!
\nYAGISHITA YUTA<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suwa Takako\u2019s success in a very masculine milieu has set a benchmark for women throughout Japan. For Suwa Takako, the decision to take her father\u2019s […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4341"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4348,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341\/revisions\/4348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zoomjapan.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}