Foreign personnel are essential in migrating to global-standard systems and for revitalizing and acquiring business with overseas customers

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

Our company was founded in 1950 and is engaged in the design and manufacture of pipe machining tools and machining robots, used in automobile manufacturing and building materials. We are currently exporting to about 20 countries around the world, but a big challenge was that we had no global talent at the company who could speak foreign languages and therefore could not increase direct negotiations with customers. For example, while we have had a relationship with client companies in Uzbekistan for twenty years, we have made little progress in expanding our business transactions and interactions. In addition, personnel capable of programming the control systems we require are rare even in Japan, and we were considering recruiting foreign personnel. Under these circumstances, we wanted to try to collaborate with foreign personnel in the design department in order to gain a foothold in revitalizing our interactions with client countries and migrating our product systems in accordance with global standards, and that is when we learned about this programme.

We assigned the intern to the system migrating project, and worked to interact and overcome the language barrier

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

Mainly, we asked the intern to proceed with the programming to migrate the control panel of the FA-based system adopted by our company to the latest PC-based system that is the world standard. Although our English and intern's Japanese were not perfect, we were able to communicate with each other using common terminology, such as with drawing, mathematics, programming languages, so we could proceed with no problems. The intern was a quick learner, so we think that he responded more flexibly according to the situation. When we accepting the intern, he was young and had relatively little work experience in his own country, so we tried to create an environment that made him feel at home and that was not overly formal. We felt that if he could learn more about Japan would make it easier for him to work, and we actively engaged in communication outside of his internship activities, such as with meals and events. In addition to taking the intern's religion into considering when preparing meals, we also did our best to support his day to day living so he could get used to life in Japan for the first time.

We moved towards the development of a world-standard system and broadened our vision toward business expansion

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

In the programming process, there was the problem of errors being discovered at the testing stage, but interns and employees worked together to overcome the issue and successfully reach the goal. In addition, we contacted our customers in Uzbekistan and we were able to reconnect with them. We felt that the goal of wanting to "work closely with global human resources and approach a global standard system" that we initially envisioned was realistic, and we could set out a vision for business expansion in the future. I think that employees can now picture a path towards new standards. In addition, as an unexpected bonus, teaching the interns lead to the improvement of our employees' own knowledge and skills, and the abilities of each individual were made manifest. Through this experience, we felt again that, when recruiting foreign talent, it was important to be aware that we are looking after a country's treasures and it was important that we treat them fairly. This will also serve to make us appealing to Japanese human resources that aspire to be active on the global stage, and also be advantageous for domestic recruitment. We think that it will lead to being a shortcut for SMEs that challenge global markets to expand their business.