A:
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Door-to-door delivery services are enormously useful and convenient, and not particularly expensive either. But what was it that prompted you to launch such a service in the first place?
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B:
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(A member of staff at Yamato Transport) When there was no home delivery service, the only way the average household could send parcels was by rail or mail, and in either case you had to take your parcel to the nearest station or post office. It was annoying having to pack and tie up your package, and it also took several days for it to reach its destination. Moreover, there was no method of sending fresh foods or materials needed in a hurry.
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A:
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And that's what grabbed Yamato's attention, isn't it?
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B:
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When Yamato Transport was established as a freight carrier back in 1919, we only had four trucks. At that time, there were only 204 trucks in the whole country. Then in the 1960s, the development of the expressways made it possible to provide long-distance forwarding services. What our company did, then, was to identify and offer a service, i.e. the transportation of goods and articles for normal households, that no other company was offering. Our "Takkyubin" express home delivery service was launched on January 20, 1976. Our rivals call their services "Takuhaibin", which means "home delivery service", but only Yamato calls its home delivery service "Takkyubin". The aim of this system is to overcome the inconvenience experienced in the past and deliver articles for general households quickly and safely anywhere in the country. Funny though it seems looking back on it now, on the first day we only had two packages to deliver.
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A:
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I wonder why it was that your Takkyubin express home delivery service grew so rapidly.
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B:
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We constantly sought to expand the number of outlets offering our pick-up service, increase the range of articles we handled, and think of new services to meet customer needs. As a result, the number of customers using Takkyubin increased spectacularly.
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In terms of figures, what has the increase been like?
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B:
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In the beginning in 1976, we handled 1.7 million pieces, but this figure had increased to around 40 million in 1980, 200 million in 1985, 430 million in 1990, 700 million in 1995, 750 million in 1997, and 779 million in 1998.
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A:
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Your rivals include firms such as Nippon Express, Sagawa Express, Seino Transport, Footwork, and S-Line Gifu. Around how much is your market share?
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A total of about 1.616 billion pieces were delivered by home delivery service in 1998. Around half of which, or 48% to be exact, were carried by us.
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A:
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How many parcels are delivered by mail?
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About 400 million in 1998 according to estimates.
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A:
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That means you handle about twice as many parcels as the Japanese Post Office. What set of organizational setup does your company have?
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We have about 75,000 employees in all, 54,000 of whom are men and 21,000 are women. We have 29,000 trucks and other vehicles, 67 Takkyubin centers and 297,000 Pick-up Points throughout the country. And the catchphrase "Kuroneko Yamato no Takkyubin" has become synonymous with the company.
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What is the motto of your company?
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To deliver articles speedily, reliably and cheaply. With the exception of items bound for the Tohoku district, Hokkaido, parts of Kyushu and Okinawa, items sent from Osaka are certain to reach their destination the following day. And providing the destination is in Japan, packages will arrive at their destination in one and a half days at the latest. The reason why we can do this cheaply is because we handle parcels in bulk, which offers advantages of scale. If you bring the article you want to send to a store offering our pick-up service, it's ¥100 cheaper per item. Based on the idea that Takkyubin is a "system industry", we have developed our own original systems. Two typical examples are SIS (our strategic information system) and the NEKO system. These systems enable us to pinpoint exactly where individual items are at any point in time and respond to our customers' needs and inquiries. The NEKO system uses VAN (value added network).
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A:
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When you showed me your parcel sorting system, I saw there were many reflective optical sensors all over the place and parcels were being processed at tremendous speed.
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Yes, that's right. We wouldn't be able to process the volume of parcels we do unless we operated at such high speed, and costs would also increase.
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A:
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I assume some items must be wrongly delivered. What is the error rate like? Also, does the volume of parcels vary at all depending on the day of the week?
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The proportion of items wrongly delivered is only 0.03%, which is extremely low. We handle comparatively more items on Mondays and Tuesdays, as people tend to send things they bought at the weekend on these days. And of course looked at over the course of the year, we handle more items in the summer and at the end of the year when people traditionally send each other gifts.
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Yamato Transports offers all kinds of services. What are your main ones?
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Our main services are our Takkyubin Time Service (which is guaranteed to arrive by 10:00am the following day), Cool Takkyubin (for delivering chilled and frozen items), Collect Service (a service combining delivery of mail order purchases and items purchased from direct sale outlets, collection of payment and approval), a logistics agency service to meet firms' logistics needs, airmail and designated time delivery (for delivery of urgent documents and other items within a certain period the same day), UPS Takkyubin (an international business support service offered through a tie-up with United Parcel Service), The Sea Mail (a low cost method of sending non-urgent materials by sea), a rail container service, delivery of works of art, delivery of golf and ski equipment, Airport Takkyubin, delivery of unaccompanied luggage overseas, storage of household belongings and clothing, and an internet/telephone book service.
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It has been said by some that the slowdown in demand from the corporate sector due to the recession poses a threat to the hitherto buoyant home delivery market. What are your views on the subject?
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It certainly seems so. As I mentioned, we have introduced a range of novel services and have increased the number of pieces we handle. For instance, some 100,000 pcs were transported by Cool Takkyubin in the year the service was launched, but in 1998 this figure had grown to about 97 million pcs. However, it is impossible to ignore the feeling that demand for all services may now have peaked.
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I wonder what area of business you have your sights set on now.
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I think we will be become more involved in e-commerce. In November 1998, we set up an internet site called the "Kuroneko Exploration Corps". The site features lists of manufacturers from whom you can buy directly, so customers can access the company of their choice and order what they want. We then deliver the product to the customer by Takkyubin. 1,600 stores have registered with the site, which is accessed on average over 20,000 times a day, which is a pretty good start. We also offer a mail order book service for ordering books via the internet, and over 700,000 orders per year have been taken so far.
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What with the economy in recession and the birthrate in decline, the home delivery service faces some challenges ahead, doesn't it? What areas of business will you be concentrating on in the future?
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E-commerce and our growing Cool Takkyubin business will likely play an important part in our home delivery. We will seek to fill the new demands that e-commerce creates and deliver products ordered that way. E-commerce will, I think, have a significant impact on home delivery services in the future. |
(Cooperation: Yamato Transport Co., Ltd.)
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