Interesting International experience today.......

[TnAndy]

My tractor dealer calls yesterday and says the Yanmar reps are in town and would like to get some feedback from owners, would I mind if they came out tomorrow morning (today) and talk to me.

I said "LOVE TO"....So I spent a couple hours last evening writing up some of the problems I've had with the tractor ( not too many ), and some suggestions for changing things to make a good tractor even better. Figured I was probably wasting my time, I'd give it to them, we would shoot the bull for a bit and they would file 13 it, "having done their job".

I was expecting a couple of American guys from the factory (in Georgia, USA). Imagine my surprise when a car rolls up and 4 VERY Japanese folks ( 3 men, 1 woman ) pop out, notebooks and cameras in hand !

I spent a bit going over the tractor, and finally pulled out my 4 pages of notes and comments and sketches for improvements. Their eyes got WIDE....ahahahahaaa....but I'll give them credit...those folks LISTENED, and asked intelligent questions, and seemed genuinely grateful for the feedback.

Then we took a short tour of the farm, ( not the full buck tour, just the 50 cent version ) and they had all kinds of questions for me about growing things, and we have going on right now. I got the feeling these guys were engineer types, not farmers, but we had a big time anyway. We could have entertained each other all day, but they had to cut it off and move on to the next owner.

At some point early on, the gal took down something I said about "Americans lacking in longer term vision for the most part".....then hour later when I was talking to one of the guys about my solar power system, he asked about the high initial costs, and I said something like "well....you have to look at it long term....you're pre-paying your electric bill for 30 years ahead....it's long term thinking"......and immediately, the gal looks down at her notes and parrots back to me "Americans are short term thinkers"....ahahahaaaaa

ANYWAY, it sure was an enjoyable couple hours. And I was so impressed that Yanmar would spend the time to get actual user feedback to improve their products. NEVER had an American company respond much to letters I've sent them on problems with their stuff ( and I've sent several ) past the canned "Thank you for your letter, have a nice day"...or "Here is a coupon for $50 off the purchase of your next new truck"..... ( Basically, we're gonna keep on making the same crap and expect you to buy it because our commercials will win you over. )

 

[varmint]

Thanks for taking the time to write this and post it. Very interesting, and says a lot about Yanmar! I have never heard of such serious "research" about end user's opinions.

 

[Baby Grand]

Someone on here ( I think it was John Thomas ) had a sit-down interview with Kubota engineers/executives, arranged by his dealership.

 

[GManBart]

Very interesting! I've heard that LS has taken complaints and made obvious changes to the product fairly quickly....a nice thing to see, and hopefully something that continues. Very cool of them to come to you!

 

[jeff9366]

I hope you exposed the Yanmar reps to the T-B-N Yanmar Forum.

 

[steverino101]

good post regarding yanmar's attention to detail, and i'm not saying it's the same thing, but
this is purportedly how (notebooks and camera's) the chinese took over much of the tool and die trade.
they came and visited shops, took pics and then went back and reverse engineered molds. Now,
they control much of the industry.

 

[powerpace]

Back in 1973 I had a Kubota. Had it for one year. I don't remember the model but it had a oil bath pre air filter. The engine froze up because the oil bath wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. The Japanese were very interested and shipped the engine back to Japan for evaluation. I got a new engine installed no charge "under warrantee anyway". I think they fazed out the oil bath cleaner in the next design change.

 

[Dr_Zinj]

And here I thought this was a post about International Harvester.

Unfortunately, that Japanese gal was pretty much on the money about most Americans not being long term thinkers. That's 50% of what's wrong in Washington D.C., the other 50% is a just plain dishonest mindset which adds up to 100% criminal behavior from most of our government leaders.

No offense to our non-American members, but I don't exactly know what Mr Obama learned in those schools overseas while he was growing up, but I suspect it wasn't the same thing most of us learned growing up here in the U.S.

 

[TnAndy]

I hope you exposed the Yanmar reps to the T-B-N Yanmar Forum.

They were already familiar with it. They asked if I participated in any online discussion forums, and when I mentioned this one, they knew it already.

 

[3930dave]

That is impressive attention from a company today.

I don't own any Yanmar engines, but I'm not surprised to hear this story told. A buddy is restoring an old top-of-it's-class sailboat - he figures that given even the slightest whiff of decent maintenance, the original Yanmar diesel that's in it will probably outlive his grandkids. You don't continue to build products like that today by accident.

One characteristic of Japanese companies that still seems true today is that even their executives seem to sweat the small details. I think it was Nissan (might have been Toyoda) - for one of their last vans, the chief engineer (or maybe VP?) volunteered to (and did) drive an early production mule coast-to-coast in the USA. Culturally, they still seem to value direct hands-on experience, regardless of their personal stature - smart, real smart - at least if your business is actually building things, as opposed to running financial scams.

The other neat thing about that story was that the Eng Executive made it explicitly clear that this was something that he wanted to do personally, and that he did not want it interpreted as something he expected his subordinates to do in the future. I think that part of the story is even cooler than the fact that he did what would be considered over here a pretty menial task, usually assigned to a junior engineer/team.

Smart companies push their product development people to get out in the field (pun intended) and really learn how their customers use/abuse/maintain (or not)/modify their equipment.

Rgds, D.