Nobuhisa Watanabe
Engineering department

- What is your role here at Kawai Corporation?
My job is split into two parts. Firstly, I'm in charge of checking whether the customer's heater request is the best choice for the purpose that they are requesting. I check the maximum operating temperature, size and resistance of the material, the situation and conditions of use and other things to determine if the requested heater suits the customer's purpose. If everything is fine then we proceed to make the product in a way that's easy to use and understand. If we find that the heater can't match up to the customer's request then we recommend other options to them. Second, is developing and checking new products. There are three elements to this: we either create a heater using new material, create a new way of making a heater, or we find a new way of using a heater.

- What do you think Kawai's strong points are?
I think our biggest strength is how we make our products. We don't just give out our products in bulk by the catalogue; we make a heater just for the customer. Customers don't need to worry about if their order is small or a unique request because we make our heaters to order and work to make the customer's request. Sometimes we are not able to create the heater that the customer is looking for but we encourage people to come to us with an idea and ask "Is this possible?".

- What is your favorite aspect of the company?
Everyone here is really close and gets along well. Not only that but we have a certain degree of freedom as employees that I'm not sure is present in other companies. We're free to try new things; if we have something that we want to do, we can just do it. If I want to try using a new material or design for a heater, even if I don't have a clear idea the directors would give an "okay". I feel this is a great boost to our innovation and raises the quality of our employees.