The Horizon plant at Biwako is about an hour by train outside Kyoto, ancient imperial capital of Japan. It’s a finely engineered balance of high tech automated manufacturing and almost craft-like machine assembly. Patrick Howard went to visit while on a recent visit to IGAS.
Hori-san = Hachiro Hori, founder of Horizon, circa 1946.
It starts to make sense when you meet Eijiro Hori, president of Horizon and son of the founder, Hachiro Hori. As a man of achievements and accomplishment in Japan, Hachiro was always known with the honorific San after his name, as in Hori San. When he founded his company after the war, the former engineer was unable to continue his career due to the US Army Occupation decree that denied any officer of the Imperial Army the right to work. He set out to make voltage meters for schools, later expanding to making small booklet makers.
So began what is now the most expansive post-press equipment maker in the world, Horizon, or, as it was known in Japan, the company of Hori-san.
None of this was obvious on the fast bullet train streaking through the rain towards Kyoto from Tokyo where a bunch of us at IGAS had accepted Bernie Robinson’s invitation to visit the Horizon factory. Riding the streamlined Nozomi train is the kind of experience that brings out everyone’s inner geek, with Shadi Taleb of Intelligent Media and Heath Nankervis of Impact Digital measuring how fast we’re going through an App on their smart phones. Point the camera at the window and watch it climb to 270 kph. That’s quite fast, as the train rocks gently, almost noiselessly, through the non-stop urban development that lines the 500km route.
It takes a little over an hour and a half to cover the distance and yet again – this was my fifth time along the route – iconic Mount Fuji was invisible, shrouded in cloud and mist. Michael Warshall of Melbourne-based Nulab, photographer extraordinaire, shows me photos of the snow-capped mountain he took a few days before. He assures me it does actually exist.
Kyoto is the city of a thousand temples struggling under the weight of mass tourism. Our group is escorted up the Kiyomizu-dera, a large temple compound on the edge of a cliff overlooking the city. We shuffle through with the thousands of tourists along the narrow domestic laneways. Later we walk by the river before Matsuhiko Yamada, Horizon export manager and our conscientious guide, hosts us to a good dinner.
The rain has settled in solidly the following morning as we make our way by train towards the Horizon factory at Biwako, so called because it sits beside Biwa, Japan’s largest freshwater lake. This is pristine country that supplies drinking water to millions of people in surrounding cities.
Here there are no polluting industrial suburbs. The Horizon factory seemingly springs out of surrounding rice paddies, totally innocuous in its impact on the environment. Despite the serious heavy engineering and metal work going on here, there is not even a wisp of smoke or noxious discharge.
Eijiro Hori is tall, polite and, as a good host, attentive to the needs of his guests. This is old school Japan and it’s a pleasure to share his obvious pride in the stature of his family business. From his father’s start-up after the war, in the 69 years of its existence, Horizon has grown to be a very substantial business, employing 550 people. It is the pre-eminent postpress equipment manufacturer, with a plant that manufactures 70% of the components it uses.
There is a controlled passion for his enterprise in this gentle man that you don’t get in your average corporate honcho. The company was hit hard like everyone else during the GFC, but no employee was let go. There is to be no export of jobs from Japan to lower cost countries in order to maximise profits. He tells of the company’s planning philosophy; plan cash for one year; product for 10 years; people for 100 years.
The factory tour is informal, no fluorescent jackets, no hard hats, just don’t step out side the yellow lines … and even then. The heavy metal fabrication uses automation as advanced as I’ve ever seen. Warehouse robots supply the giant lathes and drills with raw metal during the day, which is then worked on through the night, 24/7, with no intervention. Massive sheet metal stamping and laser cutting emphasize that Horizon machines are indeed serious pieces of equipment. Huge plastic moulding machines look like something out of Dr Who.
Then we move on to where the machines are put together and the contrast could not be more dramatic. From the land of the robots to what seems to me, to be almost craft-based machine assembly. Here there are no assembly lines moving along with people as mere cogs in the machine. Factory workers, men and women, work surrounded by all the parts they need to build some of the most complex mechanical equipment in the printing industry. They work at a seemingly unhurried pace, quietly concentrating, constructing the complex machines with allen keys and automatic wrenches. When I later ask Eijiro-san about the lack of automation in assembly he explains that every machine is ordered before work starts and there are more than 100 different models, so this is not the place for automobile-factory style production lines.
Later we get to see the plant’s state-of-art climate and EMC testing chambers, essential for a company whose machines operate in all parts of the world, meeting the highest occupational safety standards in Europe and the USA. This is also where they test prototypes in a continuing search to fulfil market requirements. Listen and respond to market requirements is another part of the corporate philosophy.
We can’t go to the clean room environment where they create the motherboards and computer circuits used in the folders, saddle stitchers, perfect binders and collators that are Horizon’s stock in trade. It’s off limits while they work on a problem with static electricity.
Back in the visitor’s room, Eijiro-san shows us slides of the history of his enterprise and also of his friendship with David Currie of Currie Group, Horizon’s long-term agent in Australia and New Zealand. They are close friends, business partners for 34 years. The slightly faded photographs are of young men starting out, of ongoing meetings in Japan and Australia over the years and of their gradual greying. Family snapshots include both of their fathers, their wives and children.
We assemble for the obligatory photographs before climbing back on the bus to depart through the sodden rice fields. I’m first away at Kyoto railway station back to Tokyo airport then home. Lots of handshaking, even Rob Dunnett is there, totally schtum about his new role to be announced in a few days time.
Factory visits are useful. I like to do them. They allow you to see behind the marketing hype. They give you the opportunity to gauge how genuine the people are, how fair dinkum the enterprise and whether you'd advise someone to buy their kit. They allow you to sense whether a company is on the rise or past its peak.
Horizon is a fine company; it’s in good hands, has excellent R&D and an unbeatable manufacturing ethos. It’s not owned by private equity hedge funds that’ll gamble its reputation and intellectual property to make a few extra quid. Eijiro-san is in there for the long-term.
Serving a printing industry that is still very much an owner-operated sector, Horizon brings with it a reassuring level of confidence and professionalism. People like to deal with people they can recognise and respect, part of the reason why Horizon is such a successful company.
On the way back to Tokyo, Mount Fuji was again invisible behind the clouds and mist. The mountain gods must want me to return.