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6 | The Japan Times | Monday, August 12, 2024

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SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’
Unraveling Japanesecompanies
HIROKO NAKATACONTRIBUTING WRITER

One year before their company changed
its name to SWCC Corp. in 2023, one ofthe younger executives came to the CEOand said they needed to define a company
purpose. There was a sense of crisis amongsome because the old name, containing“Wire and Cable,” showed exactly what thecompany did.
“I was told the new name, SWCC,
doesn’t say what we do, and it made themworry about which direction they should
go in,” CEO Takayo Hasegawa said in arecent interview, part of a monthly series
by Naonori Kimura, a partner for the consulting firm Industrial Growth Platform
Inc. After she gave the green light to theidea, the executive gathered together
workers in their 30s and 40s at the parent
company as well as its group companies
and discussed it. After six months, they
drafted a statement defining why thecompany exists.
What surprised Hasegawa was thatit said what she had told her workers
over and over again. The purpose started
with “We’re here to face the challenges

resiliently in this changing world” andsummed up with: “Innovating new ideas
today. Becoming the norms of tomorrow.”
This was the moment she learned herbeliefs had permeated their thoughts.
“Since I became the CEO, I have told
them whenever I have a chance that thecompany needs to change and that not
moving forward is going backward,” said
Hasegawa, the first female CEO in Japan’s
wire and cable industry.
She has told them there is no need tostick to the cable and wire business — thecompany’s cash cow for decades — andencouraged them to do what they can.
Even though just maintaining the oldbusiness may be easier, because aging
power lines will eventually need to bereplaced by new ones, such conservatism
limits the company’s future potential. “Ihave always hoped they think about thecompany’s future and have a strong imageof moving forward to the next stage,” shesaid.
SWCC was founded in 1936 as Showa
Electric Wire and Cable Co., spun off fromTokyo Electric Co., which is now the electronics giant Toshiba Corp. Since then, ithas produced and sold electric wires andcables.
But its weak financial health became
clear in the 2010s, and reforming its
conventionalism became urgent. Inde-“About five years
have passed since I
started the reform,
and the company has
transformed itself
significantly — theway the workers
think, their motivation and their energy
to take on newchallenges,”
Hasegawa said.
HIROMICHI MATONOSWCC CEO Takayo Hasegawa is the first female CEO in Japan’s wire and cable industry.
HIROMICHI MATONO

pendent directors who recognized thewarning signs urged Hasegawa, whothen was the managing director and is aPh.D.-holding researcher with expertisein superconductors, to take the CEO post.
She accepted it in 2018.
What Hasegawa did first was gather
the company’s financial data since 2000,
which made her realize its poor profitability, she said. During that period, the earnings results dipped into the red several
times. Even in the years when it made net
profits, they were very slim.
What she thought was the root causeof this financial feebleness was somesections that showed a low return on
invested capital (ROIC), which measures
how efficiently investments are utilized.
In 2019, she introduced ROIC to gauge theprofitability of each business area. Basedon this, she launched reforms and streamlined the business by selling off someareas and withdrawing from others. Thenthe company reviewed its seniority system. It also reorganized into three major
segments: energy and infrastructure; communications and industrial devices; andelectrical equipment and components.
As a result, the company’s average ROIC
for the following four years was 7.1%, farabove the 0.7% for the business year that
ended in March 2016, when the company
marked a net loss of ¥9.15 billion ($60 million). Its return on equity (ROE), a widelyused measurement of a company’s profitability, improved significantly to 14.7%
over the four years, from minus 29.5%.
The introduction of the restructuring
more than doubled the company’s stock
price within one year. In the last business
year, it logged a record profit of ¥12.21billion.
“About five years have passed since I
started the reform, and the company has
transformed itself significantly — the way
the workers think, their motivation andtheir energy to take on new challenges,”
Hasegawa said. But naturally, there aresome people who oppose such reforms
because they are used to the old culture
nurtured across the company’s 88-yearold history. “It takes time, for sure. But
I believe the company will continue tochange over time,” she said.
SWCC currently aims to provide solution-oriented services based on its technologies and the trust it has built withcorporate customers over a long time.
This means the company will take a stepfurther from merely selling products
toward creating new products and services to address its customers’ needs.
Hasegawa said she always tells her
employees to set a “110%” target — “Bydoing so, they can continue to makeefforts to reach the goal, and if they getclose to it, that makes them confident andgain experience,” she said.
She also said there is a strong connection between what kind of business management the company looks at and how
it wants to nurture its human capital. “I
believe that if the CEO decides on a direction for the corporate strategy, the CEO
also has to decide on a direction and content for workforce development,” she said.
Based on this philosophy, she has developed training menus for the top managers, the next-generation leaders and theyounger workers. It is important to create a pool of human resources who havetraining in strategic management plus themindset to change the company for thebetter, she said.
“I’m responsible for developing humanresources who are ready and capable ofrunning the company in the next generation, because business as well as top management continues to change,” Hasegawa
said. “That’s how to create a company thatstays strong, resilient and sustainable for along time.”
The Sustainable Japan section highlights
issues related to the environment and a sustainable society. For more information, see
https://sustainable.japantimes.com

NAONORI KIMURA
INDUSTRIAL GROWTH PLATFORM
INC. (IGPI) PARTNER“Not moving
forward is goingbackward”: CEOTakayo Hasegawa
stresses theimportance ofcreating a corporate culturethat supports challenging employees.
With its long history and stable business foundation, it must have been
hard for SWCC to reform its corporateculture. But the outcome is apparent
in terms of financial results and workers’ mindsets because of Hasegawa’s
steady efforts since she became theCEO in 2018.
For a company’s longer-term
growth, it is essential to realize not
only business strategies but corporatetransformation by updating the values
themselves. In SWCC’s case, the company has formulated its strategies led
by a leader who clearly shows the way
forward and commits to developing
human resources across the company,
from young workers to next-generation managers.
Also, it is worth paying attention to
its perfect numerical targets, which
encourage workers to believe they can
do it if they try, while still responding
to expectations from the market. Its
unique corporate purpose, written
like a story, was created by its employees themselves, showing how widelyreforms have spread throughout thecompany.
SWCC, which became a sustainable
company after conducting a transformation with the top management
and the employees working together,brings hope and provides a model totraditional Japanese companies thatare struggling to change themselves.

Suntory nurtures water, forests and future generations
Sustainable JapanNetworkMAIKO MURAOKACONTRIBUTING WRITER

Just like Suntory Holdings says in its corporate philosophy, “To inspire the brilliance of life, by creating rich experiences
for people, in harmony with nature,” thecompany contributes to the enrichmentof people’s lives beyond merely selling
food and beverages globally. Although
responsive to changing needs since its
establishment in 1899, the company also
has always been faithful to what it calls its
responsibility “to give back to nature, andto society.”“In the field of environmental protection, we started bird conservation activities 51 years ago, which was long before
the concept of ‘sustainability’ began toattract people’s attention,” said Masaaki
Fujiwara, Suntory’s chief sustainability
officer.
Along with the recycling of plastic
bottles and reducing of greenhouse gas
emissions, the company focuses on thesustainability of water, the most criticalelement for its business — and the entire
human race.
Harumichi Seta, senior general managerof the Sustainability Management Division, said the number of people with inadequate access to water is predicted to pass

5 billion by 2050, a significant increase
from the 3.6 billion in 2018, according
to the 2021 State of Climate Services
report from the World MeteorologicalOrganization.
“Proper use and preservation of water
resources is a matter of vital importanceto everyone who uses the same water
source. We cannot let someone monopolize water or use it up. As a company, weare being watched, tested and judged if weare acting fairly,” Fujiwara said.
In addition to conserving water at its
plants, Suntory is also working to help
people learn how soft, fluffy soil is important for regenerative agriculture and waterabsorption and to manage healthy forests
with enough sunlight to foster diverse
species, creating rich soil that helps nurture abundant groundwater. “That is what
we call the Natural Water Sanctuary,which was launched in 2003 in Aso in
Kumamoto Prefecture, where one of ourplants is located,” Fujiwara said.
This initiative has been expanded tovarious places across Japan, and there
are now 26 sites in 16 prefectures that are
being taken care of by the company withthe help of more than 40 forest experts
and local stakeholders. Their area totals
12,000 hectares, recharging twice the volume of water that Suntory pumps fromunderground at the plants it owns inJapan.
“Activities to protect forests and water
resources require regional cooperation

Teaching children
about the importance of a healthywater cycle at theMizuiku Water HeroCamp in Thailand’s
Rayong province.
SUNTORY

A nature experience program at the Global Mizuiku Summit in Vietnam. SUNTORY

and efforts to engage future generations,”
Seta said. That is why Suntory launched
Mizuiku — an educational initiative on
nature and water, whose name comesfrom “mizu” (water) and “iku” (nurture),that teaches children about the water
cycle and how to protect it. In 2004, thefirst Outdoor School of Forest and Water
opened in Aso, where camping and otherevents helped children experience andunderstand the importance of forests andwater.
Today, there are three more outdoor
schools across the country as well as an
online version that started during thecoronavirus pandemic. Their environmental education program has beenenhanced and systematized over theyears, helping not only children but also
their parents gain insights about nature.
“We have also been providing teaching programs at elementary schools since2006. We collaborate with teachers, havethem lead their classes to think about thewater cycle as the first part of the lesson,and for the second part, we think about
what each student can do to protect itwith a focus on our Natural Water Sanctuary Initiative,” Seta said.
The programs can also be delivered
online with interactive communication,with Mizuiku instructors walking into aforest in real time or using a drone to get abird’s-eye view of the forest.

PAGE: 6More than 250,000 people — children,
parents and teachers from all 47 prefectures — have participated in Mizuiku
programs to date. Suntory has also been
expanding Mizuiku worldwide, starting with countries where its factories arelocated. The company collaborates withlocal players such as nonprofit organizations to tackle region-specific issues while
placing importance on healthy water
cycle, the core of Mizuiku.
“Finding the right partner is the mosttime-consuming part, but once we know
who to work with and that we get alongwell, we can sail smoothly. The employees at our plants participate in Mizuiku
actively, too. They share the same sense ofcrisis that the beverage business will notsurvive without awareness about water
issues,” Fujiwara said.
Vietnam was the first country where
Mizuiku activities took place outside
Japan, in 2015. Sanitation was one of the
major issues germane to water, and so theproject included the installation of filter
systems and the renovation of toilets atelementary schools in addition to thecore content focusing on the water cycle
and sustainability. “We have also been collaborating with the government of Vietnam to create a teachers’ guide so thatthey can provide Mizuiku on their own,”
Fujiwara said.
In April, the second Mizuiku Global
Summit was held in Vietnam. “Mizuiku
leaders from all the countries whereMizuiku is taking place gathered andshared their best practices. The participants were listening intently to thepresentations of other countries, sympathizing and learning,” Fujiwara said.
So far, Mizuiku has expanded to Thailand, France, China, Spain, the U.K. andNew Zealand. “In New Zealand, we collaborated with a local nonprofit organization toconduct a program for elementary school
students last year that involved picking up
trash in areas near the school, classifying it
according to type, to raise awareness of theimportance not to litter to keep nature andMasaaki Fujiwara, Suntory’s chief sustainability officer SUNTORY

rivers clean. The data gathered as a result of
the project is beneficial for the future activities of the organization,” Seta explained.
In June, a camp event, the largest of its
kind that the company has organized, washeld in Thailand’s Rayong province. “About450 children and 60 teachers from 30
schools participated in the event to learn
about climate change and the water cyclen
through hands-on experience in nature,including walking in a mangrove forest,
testing the water quality of a pond in thearea and collecting plastic waste on thebeach,” Seta said.
The company is committed to continuing its combined effort of forest conservation and environmental education.
Fujiwara stressed that corporate sustainability efforts should be made for natureand society, not to meet requirements forenvironmental disclosures.
“We will continue to make humane
efforts to achieve sustainability, which
is what we have always been doing for
decades, produce good results and expand
our activities across the world,” Fujiwara
said.
Suntory is a member of the Sustainable
Japan Network, a group of companies thatcooperate with this newspaper to spread
information about sustainability in Japan.
You can also be part of the network; scan theQR code for more details.