Shintaro Hayakawa
Manufacturing department - Assistant manager

- What first attracted you to apply for a job at Kawai Corporation?
I always had a passion for creating and building new things so I wanted to be in a position where I could work with my hands and Kawai looked like the perfect place to do this.

- What is your favorite aspect of working at Kawai?
As mentioned before, I wanted to work at a job where I could be innovative and work with my hands and Kawai is a great place to do this because the culture at Kawai encourages and supports new ideas. Even better, most of the time, what we do improves our quality and speed and makes our customers happy as a result.

- As an employee, what do you think Kawai's strong points are?
I think Kawai is a very personal and customer oriented company that greatly caters to its customers through professional consultation and a dedication to service. When it comes to our products I think our high quality and speed of delivery set us apart. I believe these qualities may have also arisen from our great company culture which follows the “Kaizen” philosophy of openness and never ending improvement.

- You mentioned Kaizen, the philosophy of always looking to improve, how does this benefit Kawai?
In general I think Kaizen is a great philosophy because it is open and supportive of new ideas. Kaizen means improvements which never end. I believe these new ideas can positively affect the company by improving on processes that in turn make the company more efficient and effective.
Personally, I recommended a move to molding plates from hand making a certain heater which ended up improving both speed and quality and making the process much easier for our assembly staff. Furthermore, I constantly encourage staff to recommend improvements; no matter how big or small they are, because everything has the potential to improve.