The Pride in Being the Final Word on Product Quality
The Duty of Shouldering Yamaha’s
Reputation for Quality
When developing a new product at Yamaha Motor, members from product planning, design, product testing, and other divisions come together to form a dedicated project team. I participate in the project as well, handling the quality assurance side of things, planning and proposing a wide range of activities related to product quality, and then putting them into action.
Even after a product is launched on the market, we continue monitoring how it’s used and keep gathering customer feedback, so in that sense, I stay closely involved with each model—from before it even takes shape all the way through to when it reaches the customers’ hands and becomes part of their motorcycling life.
Our quality assurance work begins by first setting targets for the level of quality we aim to achieve. To meet those targets, we take the initiative ourselves to plan measures for mitigating potential risks. The foundation for this work is Yamaha’s massive stock of accumulated data and deep well of knowledge and experience, but for products introducing new technologies, mechanisms, and the like, there’s no previous data to draw on. In those cases, we put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and put our imaginations to work in order to come up with and execute the necessary activities.
Maintaining Yamaha’s reputation for quality requires shouldering a strong sense of responsibility, but at the same time, it’s the weight of that responsibility that makes the job so fulfilling. My approach is to act first by clarifying the issues and risks, and then explore and verify countermeasures for them while building a more precise quality assurance agenda. By repeating this cycle of forming and testing hypotheses, I believe we can prevent major problems before they occur and help make the product development process smoother overall.
In addition to initiatives like these, one thing I place importance on in this job is riding, feeling, and understanding the product myself. This is really the job of our test riders, but I believe that by being able to grasp the root of the issues they point out—not just through words, but by feeling it firsthand—I can provide more on-target quality assurance measures.
Quality Assurance Unique to
the Kando Creating Company
Much of the work we do in the quality assurance departments is finding problems and implementing countermeasures for them. Ever since I joined Yamaha Motor and was assigned to QA duties, I’ve always felt a connection to the culture and philosophy of “Absolute Quality” that company founder Genichi Kawakami firmly emphasized. I’ve also seen so many instances with my own eyes where, when a problem arose, the decisions made prioritized quality above everything else. Through all those experiences, I can tell that I now have that spirit dwelling in me. I’m proud of the Absolute Quality tradition we have, and as a motorcycle enthusiast myself, I’m really happy to see how seriously the company approaches quality matters.
However, in my view, addressing such problems alone is nothing more than the bare minimum—it’s not nearly enough. I believe that quality assurance at the Kando Creating Company should also be about identifying the strengths and unique appeal of the model in question as we perform various evaluations, and then ensuring we firmly hold on to those advantages. It’s not just about making sure the product is of good quality and has sound engineering; I see it as my responsibility to guarantee that the value we offer our customers is genuine.
We have the final word on a Yamaha’s quality. We cannot, in good conscience, bring a product to market that fails to meet not only our own standards but also falls short of what our customers expect from us. This is a duty where compromise has no place, and I believe wholeheartedly in our mission. To ensure that our customers and society at large can experience what “Yamaha Quality” really means, I will do my utmost to always think, make decisions, and act from the customer’s perspective.
