NEWS

2019 New Year's Reflections

January 01, 2019

I want to wish all of you a very happy New Year.
I hope that you have enjoyed a restful and peaceful New Year's holiday.

Our company celebrated its 70th year of operations last year. I believe that with the passing of our company's founder, Shozo Omori, in May 2017, it is now our responsibility to create a new era for Omori, making it a critical turning point for the company. We must all move forward as a strongly unified team if we are to grow and advance on a massive scale.

Since the government decided to implement work-style reforms last year, making overtime restrictions even stricter, both our company and our customers urgently need to optimize business operations. However, in providing optimized service for the benefit of our customers, we are faced with the dilemma that producing custom-made machines to match the products and plants of our customers makes it difficult to improve the efficiency of our internal operations.

By observing our present-day world, you can easily see how the trend towards environmentally friendly products and the "plastic-free" movement have become increasingly strong. One after another, major companies such as Starbucks and McDonald's have been announcing that they will completely discontinue the use of plastic straws. In Japan as well, we are seeing the implementation of likeminded measures such as the acceptance of plastic products recycling strategies, including the mandatory charging for plastic supermarket bags and similar measures. There are increasingly more environmentally friendly products every year. The subject of switching to recyclable materials and resources (such as paper and biomass plastic) is extremely important right now. However, this switch is not only one that we must face due to its direct bearing on the "Packaging" industry, but rather it is a massive issue that must be considered by the industry itself.

Industry 4.0 is also another important topic of recent years. The IoT and AI have further advanced over this past year, with their effects spilling over into daily life, making them both seem common and familiar. We now have washing machines that can collect information such as the type of clothing and how dirty it is in order to automatically determine the proper washing cycle. It has been predicted that 49% of our current work will be replaced by AI. Omori must be able to closely follow and navigate these new trends.

It is said that we are currently in an age of VUCA – meaning volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – and it is readily apparent that the world is moving at speeds completely unimaginable in the past. As the era changes, it is absolutely essential for a company to be open to receiving opinions from a wide variety of viewpoints. In 2012 we started JKI, a committee to improve the abilities and skills of female workers with the participation of all of our female employees, as a part of our activities to support the active participation of women, and have continued to implement numerous related measures since then. Omori plans to achieve further diversity, not just by incorporating the opinions and ideas of our female employees, but also those of a wide variety of individuals.

This year, Omori will be soaring forward into our 71st year. It will also be the final year of the Heisei period. We must greatly value our long and illustrious history as we position our sails to fully benefit from the winds of this new era. Joining together in complete unity, we would like to set sail into this new era and work with even greater devotion to reach our destination. I thank you for your continued guidance and encouragement.

I hope you all will have a productive and successful New Year.

Omori Machinery Co., Ltd.
President & CEO
Toshio Omori