A modest but significant event in the worldwide history of weighing and packing was enacted on 19th May 2010 in Kyoto, when Takahide Ishida took over the presidency of Ishida Co., Ltd from his father, Ryuichi Ishida.
It is significant partly because the €600M-turnover company is a pace-setter in the technologies that pack much of the world’s food for retail and industrial sale. Its weighing, packing and inspection equipment serves nine out of the ten top food companies, with over 63,000 machines installed globally. Ishida is internationally recognised as a leading business-to-business brand.
Family businesses form the backbone of the world economy, accounting for the greater part of global GDP. Traditionally, they are seen as close to their customers, supportive of their communities, carrying less debt and better able to thrive in recessions than their non-family counterparts.
In more than a century in business, Ishida has drawn great strength from these qualities, which have always influenced its philosophy. This was explicitly summarised in the 1960s as the ‘spirit of three-way harmony’, which laid down that every action taken by the company had to be beneficial to its customers and partners, to its employees and to society in general, as well as to the company itself.
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This philosophy, with its recognition that a company can only thrive if people see it as a positive and useful element in their lives, is a key component of the baton that Takahide Ishida has now accepted from Ryuichi Ishida, the fourth such handover in 117 years.
40-Year-old Takahide Ishida recently received his MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the scientific and technical powerhouse on the east coast of the US which numbers 75 Nobel Laureates among its past and present community members.
Born in Kyoto, Takahide graduated from Tokyo’s Meiji University with a degree in Political Science and Economics in 1992. He then spent four years in the US observing business and studying Business Administration before returning to Japan and joining Ishida in April 1997. In 2002 he was promoted to Board Director and General Manager, Engineering Division, a key position in a company which is continually adding new ideas to daily practical experience to improve existing technologies and invent new ones. In 2006 he progressed to Executive Director and, on returning from his MBA studies, attained the post of Vice President in 2008. He is married and has two young children.
Takahide will have a high standard to live up to. Ryuichi Ishida was born in Kyoto in 1937 and has served the company for fifty years, the last 42 of them as President. During his tenure the company’s turnover increased seventy five-fold as it grew from a local Japanese enterprise into a truly international company, with operations in every major market.
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He has received many awards from his own country, most recently Japan’s top civilian honour, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, which was conferred on him by the Emperor Akihito in May, 2009. Abroad, he was the first non-US citizen to be awarded Circle of Honor Recognition by the US Snack Foods Association (1998).
Since 2004, he has been Chairman of the Japanese Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Association (JPMA), with spells as Chair of the Kyoto Watch Committee and the Kyoto Economic Union.
His presidency has seen the company invent and commercialise a key element of modern packing technology, multihead weighing, and maintain leadership in that field while broadening its offer to include important advances in snack food bagmaking, traysealing, inspection and other end-of-line equipment. As a result, today’s Ishida is a genuine solutions provider at a time when many food manufacturers are seeking to hand over more and more of the responsibility for packing their products to trusted outside suppliers.
As Takahide Ishida puts it: “The changes in the company and the business environment that took place during my father’s presidency have been enormous. The pace of change is not likely to slow in the coming years, and we are looking forward to many interesting and exciting developments. However I am confident that our overall business ethos will remain constant, and will stand us in good stead.”
Ryuichi Ishida remains available, in the capacity of Chairman, to assist his son.
