[ June 11, 2009 to June 14, 2009. ]

It was a rainy Thursday morning at the Netherlands Embassy but a good warm cup of coffee and a bite from a delicious sandwich at the Deshima Lounge cured that right away. On the 11th of June, the Business Round Table (BRT) breakfast meeting had the honor to receive Ms Patricia Bader-Johnston, Representative Director and CEO of Silverbirch Associates KK, as a guest speaker regarding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

During the presentation we learned that companies across the world who are willing to implement CSR in their businesses are rapidly increasing and that consumers and future employees attach great importance to the CSR activities/policies of the company. The impact of corporations on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders has increased exponentially with globalization. The Internet revolution has had great impact on corporate reputations worldwide as well. Nowadays many Japanese companies have successfully implemented CSR in their business and with the new ‘ECO’-boom this trend is most likely to continue and gain in importance.

[ May 29, 2009; ]

25 members joined a very special event on Friday, 29 May 2009: A special tour was arranged for NCCJ members to see inside a plant of Toyota Motor Corporation. There was a guided tour in English of the Toyota Takaoka Plant in Toyota City exclusively arranged for the NCCJ members of this excursion. The plant tour was followed by a tour of the Toyota Kaikan Museum.

The NCCJ participants gathered in Nagoya station to take a reserved bus to Toyota City where they toured the impressive and compact production facility of Toyota. Multiple vehicle models are manufactured here on a single production line and in this facility the participants could see how body parts are welded onto a vehicle body and parts are assembled to form a complete vehicle.All aspects of Toyota’s famous World Class Manufacturing, Just in Time Delivery and Kanban were shown and many relevant questions were discussed and answered by the Toyota guides.