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| A poster for the first-generation Benly. Appearing with a 4-stroke engine and a new frame with pressed steel backbone, the Benly stumbled at its start but eventually became a highly popular model. (Poster courtesy of Honda Collection Hall.) |
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In January 1953, Honda moved its Head Office and its Sales Department to 2-5 Maki-Machi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, the site of today’s Honda Yaesu Building. That same January the company bought a 100,000 square-meter site at Yamato-machi, Saitama Prefecture, and started construction of the Yamato Plant (now the Wako Plant of the Saitama Factory). In April the Shirako Plant was completed and started full-scale production. The branch network was expanded as well, with offices in Nagoya, Shikoku, Osaka, and Kyushu.
Sales of the Dream and Cub got better and better.
The slogan “120% Quality” first appeared in an article in the March 1953 issue of Honda Monthly. It was typical of Honda’s style.
“When human beings aim for 100% they will always miss by about 1%. If a customer buys one of our products that falls short by that 1%, it will mean that Honda has sold a product that is 100% defective. To eliminate the possibility of missing by 1%, we should aim for 120% quality.” People who were in the company at that time would get their practical education from Mr. Honda in even more blunt terms.
“The incredible thing about him was the way he put the customer first,” explained Kiyoshi Kawashima. “Because he always looked at things from the customer’s point of view, he actually became a customer himself. The slogan ‘Aim for 120%’ was so effective because it showed how he saw himself as an angry customer who had suffered because of a 1% failure.”
“I was struck by the word ‘giken’ (which means research and development) which I saw in a Honda recruitment ad,” remembers Tamotsu Nakano, a former member of the Board of Directors. “In January 1951, I joined the Design Department of the Tokyo Plant. But because I was an electrician there was nothing for me to do and when this was realized I was transferred to assembly. The little assembly line at the Tokyo Plant had only just started and I found myself surrounded by beginners. More experienced workers would come from Hamamatsu, give a few instructions and go back again. Because I was inexperienced I would forget things or fail to do up screws tightly enough. Whenever the Old Man appeared he would spot any mistakes - not mine but something the guy next to me had done. The Old Man’d look at him as if he was going to bite him and come up saying ‘Idiot! Fool! Clod!’ and then ‘Where does your pay come from?’ ‘From the company,’ He’d reply. ‘Where does the company get its money from?’ ‘From people who buy our products.’ ‘So, your pay comes from the customers. But you turn out shoddy work–do you want to kill those customers?!’ When the Old Man talked like this I realized that his sense of humanity wasn’t just a matter of words but came from the heart. ‘Respect for human beings,’ now one of Honda’s basic concepts, has its roots in the Old Man’s idea of humanism. I never heard him say the exact words ‘Respect human beings’ but all of us had plenty of opportunities to come face to face with his concern for others whenever he gave us a talking to. And he was always very careful who he chose to launch one of his ‘thunderbolts’ against. ‘He looks promising, and if I get angry with him it might do him some good.’ In fact he himself used to say ‘A lot of people get angry because they’re nice deep down, but I’m not like that. When I see something I don’t like I get really nasty, because if there’s anything wrong with our products, it could put lives in danger. I just can’t tolerate people who don’t take their work seriously.’ So the person he’d got angry with would really feel the pressure and break out in a cold sweat. You got the message not to make another mistake. But the next day the Old Man would act as if nothing had happened and look as if he’d completely forgotten getting angry. Afterwards we realized that his ‘thunderbolts’ were meant to be educational.”
Hideo Sugiura, former chairman of the Board, also remembers getting a severe ticking-off from Mr. Honda over a problem connected with the “120% quality” drive. [The story is told on page 156 in another chapter, “The NHP/NH Circle Begins.”] |
