MUJI Gold Medals

More than 10 years ago, Muji was once on the verge of collapse. After the third presidents came to power, they vigorously implemented reforms, and lost their profits in just two years, creating a "Muji myth" in the history of Japanese enterprises.

Can you imagine that in recent years, a lot of Chinese people's favorite Japanese brand "Muji" has been a brand that will soon go bankrupt. Muji, the Japanese national brand founded in 1980s, has a unique reputation in the overall downturn of the Japanese economic environment. It is now one of the 24 most successful brands in the world, and is one of the most successful brands in Japan.

Few people know that Muji has faced a crisis 10 years ago.

In 2001, it even lost 1 billion yen (editor's note: about 5 million 680 thousand yuan), when Japan was once widely known as "Muji".

What is the reason why Muji is brought back to life? The answer is "system".

On 2001, Matsui Chusan, the third president, took office.

He firmly believed that "the devil is in the system" and drastically reform it.

Unexpectedly, in just two years, Muji was turned into a profit, and in 2005 it set a best revenue of 141 billion yen (editor's note: about 8 billion 10 million yuan).

Write down the "Muji myth" in the history of Japanese enterprises.

Recently, the Chinese version of Matsui Chusan's "90% success of Muji" was published in Taiwan, China, revealing the secret of Muji's reversal from the bottom.

In the end, what kind of reform has made a bankrupt company become a Japanese gold medals enterprise?

2000 page guide manual to establish standards

The first foundation for Muji establishment system is the establishment of the "guidance manual".

Each store has a guidebook called "MUJIGRAM", and the store development department and the head office have another "business standard book".

In the past, the operation of Muji was purposed of "empiricism", which was different from the "sense" of different branches, and the direction of joint efforts was lacking.

The two guidance manuals, for the first time, standardized all kinds of situations that would be encountered in the work, so that employees could have concerted efforts.

Besides, the operation of the company, the development of goods, and the display of stores are all about how to receive customers.

The "MUJIGRAM" has accumulated 2000 pages.

Matsui Chusan believes that the reason for making such a thick workbook is to systemate all the businesses that originally relied on personal experience or intuition, so that the company can accumulate people's working skills and wisdom.

When employees encounter any problems, even if the supervisor is not present, consult the guidance manual, so that they can solve the problem smoothly and improve team execution.

Go to the front line and listen to employees' voices.

It is believed that the common failing of big enterprises lies in the gradual drop of the idea of leaders and front-line employees.

Leaders must go to the front line to listen to their employees' voices, so as to see problems that they can not see in the head office.

So, the first thing he did after he took office was to visit the national branches, and produced two important systems from the sales staff's experience.

One is the "best seller search" system.

That is to say, the storefront should master the ten best selling products and display them in the conspicuous place.

Because this system not only improves the performance significantly, but also makes inventory management more smoothly.

In addition, Muji's unique "one product into the soul" system is also the idea from the front-line employees.

This system allows each employee of each branch to decide on a product they want to sell and sell it at a trial price of 20% cheaper.

Because they are their favorite things, so employees will naturally put in marketing.

After the introduction of the design system, the performance did grow significantly.

It is better to cultivate talents than to cultivate talents.

Employees are the most important assets of an enterprise.

Many enterprises will find ways to tap talents, but Muji will believe that it is better to establish a system of nurturing talents within the company instead of spending money on talents.

In the past, when MUJI products were not performing well, they had also sought out famous brands who were responsible for the development of commodities. They thought that the problem could be solved easily, but unexpectedly, they had deviated from the original concept of Muji, causing greater confusion.

As a result, Muji has "talent committee" and "personnel training committee", systematically implementing education and training, allowing talents to grow out of the company rather than from outside.

Matsui Chusan changed the impression of the general enterprise, he said: "the so-called social elite, may not be able to contribute to the company.

It is really helpful for the company to keep the idea and system in mind.

Make good use of customers' opinions to create best sellers.

What is the secret of MUJI products to create best sellers? The key lies not in the creativity of commodity developers, but in the institutionalization of customers' opinions.

Although every company handles customer complaints, there are very few companies that actually have a set of systems that will use customer opinions effectively.

However, Muji will receive customers' opinions every day through telephone, e-mail and other channels, and then input the customer's input into the software called "voice guide", which will be checked by the responsible person once a week and decide whether to reflect it on the merchandise.

In addition, the website of the Institute for the study of living products has been set up to establish a system that can communicate with customers and take account of commodity development.

For example, "lazy bones sofa" is derived from customers' opinions.

It is a letter from a customer who said, "my room is so small that I can't put up the sofa, can I put the sofa on the big cushion?" until now, the lazy bones sofa sells 100 thousand popular products every year.

"Instead of taking customer complaints as trouble, it's Baoshan", which is the secret of MUJI products to create best sellers.

"DINA" control time efficiency greatly increased

As for the way of work inside the company, Muji is also constantly innovating.

"Improving efficiency" has always been an important philosophy.

For example, as the size of an enterprise grows, the decision-making process will be lengthy.

In the past, a proposal must be circulated and sealed by different departments. When it comes to the final decision maker, it has covered more than 10 chapters.

After Matsui Chusan took office, he insisted that a document "only needs three chapters" to improve efficiency and become a "speed sensitive" enterprise.

In addition, it can also make the proposal department take the responsibility of implementation, clarify the attribution of responsibility, and do not appear to have ambiguous conclusions that "all departments have responsibilities".

In addition, the company's internal network also set up a system called "DINA", which is composed of the first letter of Deadline (completion time), Instruction (instruction), Notice (Liaison), and Agenda (meeting minutes), and employees can share business instructions and contacts of all departments on the computer.

Because the general manager asks for a project proposal. If it is not so urgent, sometimes the deadline will not be set.

When there is a lack of completion time, it is difficult to link up with execution, evaluation and improvement.

If the system is visualized, no job will become an armchair strategist.

In this way, in addition to ensuring that all businesses can be carried out without fail, it is also stipulated that the employees must have a stronger motivation to work within the time limit.

As for how to address the staff, no prints also have a special corporate culture, that is, all employees are asked to be addressed by a gentleman and a lady, and the same is the case with the supervisor.

Matsui Chusan believes that many members of the organization will meet their names when they come to a lower level than themselves.

However, in such a logical logic, there is always a strong sense of class. There is an atmosphere of "facing people who are more senior than themselves."

This kind of organization, which is easy to lead from top to bottom, is easy to lead, but it will form a culture that subordinates do not take the initiative to do things. It is also easy to cover up mistakes and problems because of fear of supervisor's discovery.

As a result, Muji has changed from name to name, not only to make people mingled with each other, but also to make information and opinions more circulated and enhance communication efficiency.

Raise productivity regulations and leave work at 6:30.

Overtime is common for Japanese companies.

However, Muji is different from the others. The company stipulates that employees do not work overtime after 6:30 pm, so that many Japanese office workers envy them. The rule is to force employees to think about what they should do first and not to do anything. Naturally, action will be taken to increase productivity.

"Reducing unnecessary meetings" is a major breakthrough.

Matsui Chusan believes that the purpose of a meeting should be "deciding things and then implementing them". The goal of enterprises should be "95% of execution and 5% of plan". Therefore, the time for preparation for meetings should be kept to a minimum.

For this reason, Muji provides that the proposal for the meeting is limited to A4 paper, which advocates that "only by concentrating the information, can we really grasp the key points".

From then on, the lengthy reporting time of meetings was reduced, and the execution time became more and more, and the company became more and more energetic.

Today, Muji has been taken over by Kimi Masaki, the fourth president.

He previously served as executive director of the good quality program and was Matsui Chusan's right-hand man.

Kimi Masaki once said in an exclusive interview with the media that he learned a lot from Matsui Chusan, and the most important principle is "to promote organization operation based on simple rules".

Therefore, in Muji, there will be no formal meetings, inefficient overtime and lengthy proposal reports, all of which are precise, efficient and standardized. The succession of the system is still the core of success.

Matsui Chusan once said: "as long as we build a good system, I think that in any era, we can cultivate a winning culture." this rule is not only the experience of Muji, but also applies to all enterprises.