Six appointments on both sides of the systems contract

Mandate

Renew the legacy settlement platform before its maintenance ends, prepare dispatch for the April 2024 working-hours rules and reduce the group's dependence on outside integrators for design.

Outcomes

• Migrated three of four business lines off the legacy settlement platform; billing disputes fell from 1,900 a month to 620.
• Built dispatch that refuses assignments breaching statutory hours; no line-haul driver exceeded the 960-hour cap in two years.
• Cut average waiting at 41 data-sharing shipper sites from 112 to 44 minutes.
• Contained a vendor's ransomware attack in November 2024 with no encryption in Seriyama's environment.
• Brought requirements, architecture and data design in-house, building a design team of 46.

Decisions in context

I was appointed executive officer and CIO in April 2021, two months after the board approved the phased settlement renewal I had designed as general manager. The appointment brought the whole technology function under me, and in June 2022 I also became representative director of Seriyama Information Systems, the subsidiary that employs most of our engineers. The first two years were dominated by preparation for April 2024: modelling drivers' hours, building the dispatch planning system and working with operations on the relay network that made the limits keepable. The settlement renewal ran alongside, wave by wave. The ransomware attack on our warehouse vendor in November 2024 tested the resilience work we had begun and showed where it was incomplete. I lead 220 people with seven direct reports and present to the board twice a year, but I am not a director of the holding company.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one outside directorship with the board's consent.

Mandate

Assess the condition of the group's systems and vendor contracts, and propose how to renew the settlement platform before its maintenance ended.

Outcomes

• Produced the first inventory of the group's 212 applications, their owners and their vendors.
• Designed the phased settlement renewal, approved by the board in February 2021 at ¥7.4 billion.
• Renegotiated three maintenance contracts, saving ¥260 million a year and requiring disclosure of subcontracting tiers.
• Recruited the first nine members of an in-house architecture team.

Decisions in context

Seriyama hired me in September 2016 as general manager of IT planning, a mid-career appointment the company rarely made at that level. My brief from the President was to tell him what the company had stopped seeing. The answer took two years to assemble: 212 applications, many owned by nobody, maintained under contracts that had been renewed without review, with knowledge concentrated in a handful of subcontractor engineers. At the centre was the settlement system I had helped to write at Kotoshiro, now on hardware whose maker had announced the end of maintenance. I designed a phased replacement, kept design in-house and tested the plan with the CFO, sales and operations before it reached the board. I also renegotiated three maintenance contracts, saving ¥260 million a year, and began recruiting the architects who now lead the renewal.

Reason for the move

Promoted to executive officer and CIO.

Mandate

Restore systems at the flooded Thai plant, then standardise production, EDI and finance systems across the region's plants.

Outcomes

• Restored order receipt and shipping-notice exchange at the flooded plant within eleven weeks of arrival.
• Moved the region's servers from plant buildings to two data centres on higher ground.
• Brought seven plants onto one production and EDI template, cutting customer delivery-instruction errors by 70 per cent.
• Built a regional team in which four of five managers were Thai or Indonesian nationals by 2016.

Decisions in context

The floods of late 2011 inundated industrial estates north of Bangkok, including Amabe's largest Thai plant. I arrived in January 2012 to restore its systems and stayed four and a half years as regional IT director for seven plants in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. The first months were recovery: the plant's server room had been under water, and its customers' assembly lines were waiting for parts and for the shipping notices that told them what was coming. We restored the exchange within eleven weeks. The longer work was standardisation, bringing seven plants with different histories onto one production and EDI template, and moving servers out of plant buildings. I also served as a director of the Thai regional subsidiary. I learnt working Thai and built a team whose regional managers were mostly local by the time I left.

Reason for the move

Wanted to lead technology for a company whose core business was logistics, and was approached by Seriyama.

Mandate

Run and improve the systems that received delivery instructions from assembly-plant customers and returned shipping notices.

Outcomes

• Replaced fax-based delivery instructions from two customers with electronic exchange.
• Cut the time from receiving a sequence change to updating the loading plan from forty minutes to six.
• Led systems recovery for two Aichi plants' customer links after the March 2011 earthquake disrupted supply.

Decisions in context

I moved to the client side in July 2007, joining Amabe Industries in Okazaki to run the systems through which its assembly-plant customers sent delivery instructions and received shipping notices. It was the other end of the exchange I had built for carriers at Kotoshiro, and it taught me how much a supplier's day depends on information arriving accurately and early. I replaced faxed instructions from two customers with electronic exchange and cut the time from a sequence change to an updated loading plan from forty minutes to six. The earthquake of March 2011 showed how fragile the whole chain was when suppliers further up lost power and people. Seven months later the Thai floods reached Amabe's largest overseas plant, and the company asked me to go to Bangkok.

Reason for the move

Sent to Bangkok to lead systems recovery after the 2011 floods, then appointed regional IT director.

Mandate

Deliver dispatch, settlement and warehouse projects for transport clients in Chubu.

Outcomes

• Delivered six client projects, the largest a ¥1.8 billion warehouse system for a food distributor.
• Introduced a register of subcontracted engineers' knowledge areas for each project.
• Brought two loss-making fixed-price projects to completion within 4 per cent of revised budgets.

Decisions in context

From April 2002 I managed transport and distribution projects for Kotoshiro's Nagoya branch, first as project manager and from 2005 as senior project manager. The work taught me how Japanese systems are really built. On my largest project, a ¥1.8 billion warehouse system for a food distributor, fourteen of sixty engineers were Kotoshiro staff; the rest came from second- and third-tier subcontractors. I introduced a register recording which subcontracted engineers held knowledge of which components, because I had seen how quickly that knowledge left at the end of a contract. Two of my projects were loss-making fixed-price contracts inherited from colleagues, and I learnt how change requests become the real battleground of such contracts. I left in 2007 because I wanted to answer for how a system was used, not only for whether it was delivered.

Reason for the move

Wanted to be accountable for how systems were used, not only for delivering them.

Mandate

Design and build components of dispatch and settlement systems for carriers.

Outcomes

• Wrote the rate-calculation module of Seriyama's settlement system, which went live in April 2001.
• Built a route-planning prototype from my master's research, later used in two client bids.
• Moved from Tokyo to the new Nagoya branch in 1999 as one of its first six engineers.

Decisions in context

I joined Kotoshiro Systems in April 1997, straight from my master's degree, as a systems engineer in the transport and distribution practice in Tokyo. In 1999 I moved to the newly opened Nagoya branch as one of its first six engineers, and was assigned to the settlement system Kotoshiro was building for Seriyama, a regional trucking company. I wrote much of its rate-calculation module in COBOL, which went live in April 2001 and was still running when I returned to Seriyama fifteen years later. I also turned my master's research into a route-planning prototype that Kotoshiro used in two bids, though neither client bought it. From 2000 I led a sub-team of four. Those years gave me my first view of how a carrier's tariffs actually work, and of how few people on either side understood them.

Reason for the move

Promoted to project manager.