Indonesia Inspection Tour

At the end of August, I visited Indonesia for the first time in four years.

The first thing that surprised me when I arrived in Indonesia was the improvement in traffic congestion.

This traffic jam is a specialty of Indonesia. It used to take three hours to travel from Jakarta's Soekarno Hatta International Airport to the city center due to traffic congestion, but this time I arrived in one hour.

Actually, I did not encounter any major traffic jams at all, including between plants and when returning to Japan. According to an expatriate employee, "Traffic jams have decreased a lot, although the time is still unpredictable at times when it rains or there is an accident.

Looking more closely, I could feel that economic development has been steadily progressing, such as new highways that did not exist before, and a network of bullet trains under construction.

Benchmarking for the past 10 years

Before the Corona pandemic, I used to visit China and other Southeast Asian countries once a year on business trips to benchmark each region.

During that time, the economic development of China and Vietnam was remarkable, and each year I was amazed at the speed of change.

Thailand continued to change steadily, though not as much as China.

Indonesia had developed more than I had expected in the last four years I had not visited, and it was a major change in my conception of the country.

I felt that Indonesia's rapid development may be another example of realizing "Responding flexibly to change without being bound by past concepts”.

Transcending Departmental Boundaries

I also visited the plants of three local companies (TRID, TRHI, and FTR) and spoke with the heads of bases and expatriate staff.

I really appreciate their efforts to overcome various hardships under the Corona pandemic.

What also made me happy was that the expatriates were getting along and cooperating with each other across company boundaries in facing the difficulties.

When the business headquarters are different, there is a tendency of a little less communication, however, they were complementing each other well beyond the walls between divisions and bases, since their living environments are similar to each other locally.

When such successful examples are shared in Japan and other countries smoothly, we will grow to be a better company.

I would like you to spread this kind of successful example on a global scale.