The other day, president Hisashi Sakamaki of Canon Electronics guided me around its Chichibu factory (Photo1) where cherry trees were in full blossom. President Sakamaki is the author of “Get Rid of Chairs, Computers and Grow Your Business” (Shodensha), who carried out a bold reform removing “chairs” from its office. Except some sectors such as its reception room, Chichibu factory possess no chairs in its meeting room, development department, administrative department, no need to say about its president’s office.
According to “Get Rid of Chairs”, annual meeting hours were reduced by half due to increasing concentration during meetings; the result of removing chairs. Also, communication among the standing employees became closer, which dramatically improved the accuracy and speed of resolving problems in the office. Such as cutting expenses and reducing space, “The merits of removing chairs are immeasurable.” said president Sakamaki.
I had already known that they had extremely improved their profit by removing chairs, that there were no chairs not only in the manufacturing department but in the administrative department with its desk work, but still, I was shocked when I actually witnessed it. Here goes my report about their “shocking” office.
Get Rid of Chairs and Clean Up Your Desk
First, I visited their department’s office in charge of production control, labor management, and supplies. Employees were working with their PCs and answering phones, standing. (Photo2) Desks wore wooden “sandals” to adjust their heights to standing positions.
I discovered that their employees walked so well, when I observed them working from a distance, caring not to disturb. They were going back and forth so often between their desks and shelves for common use, placed in the back and passages of their office. (Photo3) It looked like papers and materials necessary for work were not in their desks but in the shelves.
This is also one of president Sakamaki’s reforms. To save time looking for papers and materials, everything for common use in the department or group were not possessed personally, but kept in those shelves.
As a worker in an office with chairs, I felt it extremely troublesome when I imagine the situation where I can’t reach out for my papers and materials. However, it did not look so painful walking a few dozens of steps in a standing office.
Walking for some moments might be comfortable rather than standing still. Their employees’ desks looked so neat because of the unnecessity to collect papers. Cleaning up desks is also what president Sakamaki recommends in “Get Rid of Chairs”.
The Walking Speed Machine
Suddenly, an alarm sounded and a revolving light flashed, when I was walking through the factory, listening to his explanations. At my feet, there was a blue painted zone in the hallway which said, “5m 3.6seconds”. (Photo4) They had sensors installed in both ends of the 5m zone, which will sound an alarm in case someone could not pass through in 3.6seconds. “We got a big factory; we can’t ignore the time we spend moving around. This is a gadget for our employees to experience how fast to walk.” said president Sakamaki.
Experiencing a tour through Chichibu factory, and witnessing an office without chairs, I was impressed once more with president “master of reforming” Sakamaki’s vitality. Due to his various reforms such as removing chairs, Canon Electronics’ business showed improvement of ordinary profit by 9.7 points in 8 years, through 2000 to 2007. Though they weren’t able to avoid the influence of the worldwide economic crisis after 2008, we can still highly regard its profit structure which maintained itself in the black, although their sales declined by 39.1% compared to the previous year, according to its statement of accounts for the first quarter (Jan to Mar) of FY 2009 announced on April 22nd.
Now is the crucial point for the manufacturing industry, which quickly adjusted and returned its stock to the proper level. To overcome this once in a 100year recession, we might as well need such business leaders energetic enough to remove chairs after declaring to do so.
（Michiyo Hano＝ITpro） [2009/05/19]
