The Shanghai Ricoh Fax Machine Co. Ltd. (Ricoh Shanghai for short) was founded on October 10^th, 1993. It is now a single-foreign-venture enterprise involving the investment of the Ricoh Co. Ltd. Japan’, Ricoh (China) Investment Co., Ltd. and the Champion Fax Machine of Hongkong. Ricoh Shanghai mainly produces electrical equipment for office automation and communication, such as fax machines, digital copy machines and electrical white boards. The sale of the company was 655 million Yuan in 2003, and earned a foreign exchange of more than $ 65 million. Under the guidance of “Win the customers’ trust by our quantity; promote the company’s development by quality.”, the company has been authorized by several authentication systems at home and abroad including ISO9001, ISO14001, UL,FCC15, FCC68, CE, TUV, CCC etc. It has also been entitled “Shanghai’s Inspection and Quarantine Management Enterprise of The First Class” by the national office, “Management Enterprise of A-Class” by the custom. It has been awarded “The Management Enterprise with Trustworthiness”, “The Enterprise of AA Credit Level”, “The Enterprise with Satisfaction in Shanghai”, “The Satisfied Product in Shanghai”, “The Shanghai High-tech Enterprise”, “The Shanghai Outstanding Industry Enterprise”, “The National Outstanding Foreign-ventured Enterprise”, “The National Outstanding Enterprise of Efficiency and Quality.”, and so on. 

Ricoh Shanghai has been settled in Jinqiao Area of Pudong District for more than ten years. Through ten years of development, modern factory buildings have been set up on the wild land of Jinqiao development area, which was awarded the Luban Award, the highest award of national construction quality; the biggest fax machine manufacture base of China had been formed within six years since it was listed as the “No.1 Project of Shanghai” in 1995; a poly-product structure has been formed involving a series of products like the most advanced machines all over the world: the G4 digital fax machines for ISDN communication and high-standard business multifunction copy machines, etc., which are developed from the single and general G3 fax machines.  Ricoh Shanghai is now developing quickly on a way of frequent product refreshment, gradual expansion in scale and continual raise in efficiency.  During more than ten years of development, Ricoh Shanghai has won several “first” in the country: the first fax machine of Chinese language in China in 1995; the first wireless telephone fax machine in China in 1997; the first manufacturer with the self-owned technology of developing thermistoral paper fax machine in 1998; the first G4 fax machine in 1999; and in the July of the year, the first multifunction fax machine; the first standard-equipped laser net print & fax machine and so on. Through more than ten years, Ricoh Shanghai has accumulatively produced more than 110 million of tax for the country; the yield of various kinds of fax machines has been more than 1.6million, 70% of which have been exported to Europe and North America. All these achievement and development can never be accomplished without the full support of the Shanghai Central Government and the related department of the Government of Pudong New District as well as the complementation of related policy; and the perfect environment of Jinqiao export & machining area for investment, together with its convenient service that helps to form a complete set, has also contributed a lot. 

While grasping the rapid developing trend of the economy of Shanghai and China to make good use of all these favorable policies, Ricoh Shanghai is going to write a new page in its expansion in Shanghai according to the strategy of “raising investment, enlarging scale, maintaining improvement, strengthening quality, managing in harmony with the environment, rewarding the society”.

I. Raising investment, enlarging scale

The Ricoh Group highly looks up to the economy development situation of China, and especially of Shanghai.  The managers of high level in the group believe that despite the higher labor expense than the adjacent area, Shanghai’s qualified accommodation, efficient communication centers outstanding service and environment and its rich human resource of high quality which can be used by enterprises are all advantages that the places nearby can never catch up with.  As is estimated, Ricoh Japan has now invested in 11 enterprises in China, 7 of which are in Shanghai.  By the end of 2002, Ricoh Japan set up its head office of China in Shanghai—Ricoh (China) Investment Co. Ltd.; in June 2004, a new company ventured by Ricoh Japan, Ricoh (China) Investment Co. Ltd. and Ricoh Shanghai—Shanghai Ricoh Digital Equipment Co., Ltd., was established. These companies mainly produce and sale digital copy machines, laser fax machines using ordinary paper, unified multifunction digital machines, digital cameras, laser printers, electrical white boards, and parts of high accuracy and their models, etc. These companies have been playing an important role in raising the producing rate of Ricoh group in China to more than 60%, realizing 10 years of income growth and 12 seasons of profit growth. Correspondently, Ricoh group of Japan regard Shanghai as its important manufacture base in China and its export base towards all over the world.  Ricoh Shanghai has been among the first 50 foreign-ventured enterprises for six years since 1998, and among the 500 best industry enterprises of Shanghai for 7 years since 1997.

II. Maintaining improvement, strengthening quality

As is known to all, manufacture is an industry contained strong competes, and the existence mainly depends on “high quality, low price”; fax machines are quite typical. “Low price” force a company to reduce the cost, and “high quality” promotes a company to produce products that are of high quality, high product-price ratio and high reliability. Thus, it is always our goal to provide our customers products of best Q.C.D (qualify, cost, date of deliver products). It is agreed that the reduction of cost and the raise of the reliability of products should not stop to a certain level but to go in advance to our opponents and to reach the “top of the world”. The staff of the company are suggested that: How much is it improved compared with yesterday? Improvement is surely important, but is it enough just to improve oneself? Compared with our opponents, how much has been improved?  If we’ve improved 10%, but the opponents have improved 15%, we haven’t achieved our goal. So we should get close to the purpose to defeat others. While strengthening on self-improvement, we should see the difference between outside and inside and take an active part in “achieving goals”. On the other hand, in continually reducing the cost, we should “screw water from a screwed towel”. Just like exercising muscles, the strength of screwing towel will grow stronger through exercising.  So once we continue to exercise, water can always be screwed out.  That is to say, there is always some space for reducing cost. After inspecting the workers’ both-hand working method, an ordinary worker of the company producing line intensively observed more than 12 of daily forms which people do not care so much in daily life, such as “let both hands lie idle, let one hand lie idle, operation movement pause, operation movement range too wide, alternation of hands, a few steps, turning angle too large, inharmonic movement, time drain on instructing knacks, tiptoe drain, bow too much and the drain on movement itself”, and he proposed some suggestions. Through improving these unreasonable movements, 200 seconds are saved for a worker to produce a machine on average. It takes 2000 seconds to produce an ordinary home-use fax machine, and calculated this way, workers produce one more machine when they’ve produced ten. Thus producing time is effectively reduced, the product line efficiency is raised, and the labor time drain is reduced, thus the goal of reducing cost is indirectly achieved. his improvement project was awarded the first prize of the “National QC Quality Group”. The company usually delivers the results of improvement, and every one can make suggestion to the unreasonable phenomenon in the work.  If the suggestion is proved reasonable, it can be carried out immediately and be promoted to other related departments of the company to let the staff the company share the achievement. Thus, the staff are actively and positively involved.  “Improvement” has been the core element of Shanghai Ricoh enterprise, and widely spread into the daily behavior of its staff.  Every employee is the “leader and reformer” of his work instead of “passive adapter”. In addition, the “3W” (Why, why, why) analyze method is a significant method to improve the daily working quality and product quality.  Using the “3W” method in three levels (first: the result improvement—deal with the problems happened in the process of working and make improvement; second: the process improvement—improve the process where the problem immerges to prevent it from happening again; third: the operation mechanism improvement – look into the cause and the process of the problem, and improve the operation mechanism itself to prevent it from happening), we’ve gained efficiency from improving the management and made a good result, strengthening the quality of the enterprise.

III. Managing in harmony with the environment, rewarding the society

The company paid much attention on environment protection. The Ricoh Group was glorified the golden award of the WEC (World Environmental Center) of 2003, which was awarded to one distinguished enterprise selected worldwide.  Ricoh is up to now the first also the only company that has been glorified.  A strong sense of environment protection has always been in the minds of Ricoh staff. “Green shopping” is a daily work that is promoted and executed in Ricoh Shanghai, which suggests a win-to-win idea among customers, suppliers and manufacturers. The three sides should concentrate to protect the environment and reduce the burden laid on it. That is to say, all suppliers of Ricoh Shanghai must have been authorized by the ISO14001or the Ricoh Group, those who failed to reach the standard in time will be eliminated.  The parts supplied must not contain any of the 16 materials that are harmful to the human body including Pb, Cd, PVC, six-valence Cr, etc., thus the products offered to the customers are ensured to be harmless to human beings and to the environment.

What’s more, our workers take part in the activity “No rubbish, turn the rubbish into precious”. Every employee is an artist or a designer.  Various kinds of garbage or discarded materials are changed into many beautiful as well as useful crafts which are displayed in the education room of the company.  There are lily made of plastic bottles and used paper, the carved picture of the “twelve animal symbols” made of abandoned plastic pad and used membrane for package, jumping ropes and shuttlecocks made of discarded plastic bags and glass strings, and a ship made of discarded membrane for package, used pen cap and pen, used plastic board and froth plastics entitled “high sea”, etc.  These crafts not only decorate the environment of the company but also encourage the staff to make use of their gifts of creation.  What’s more important is that using the “5R” (1.Reduce discarded materials; 2.Refuse to purchase things that are likely to become rubbish; 3. Return anything that can be recycled by the suppliers; 4. Reuse; 5. Recycle and reuse), not only the garbage within the factory are turned into useful things, but the garbage of our daily life and social activity are made use of to form a society of recycled resources.

Together with the reform and the development of Pudong new area’s going deep, Ricoh Shanghai will provide better products and services to vast customers in China.  To achieving the goal, we will insist on the gaining the trust of customers and being the most satisfied enterprise in China.  In 2004, Ricoh Shanghai is going to enlarge its investment scale. New products have been put into the market and the new blueprint is being drawn.