1 Mar 2020

PaperOne™ Customer Spotlight
Mr Jaya, Yamagata (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd

Welcome to the PaperOne™ customer feature, where we interview our customers to find out more about them, their company, their thoughts about the industry, and their partnership with APRIL Group.

For this month’s spotlight, we sat down with Mr. Jaya, Assistant General Manager of Yamagata (Malaysia). As a subsidiary of Yamagata Corporation, Yamagata Malaysia specialises in a suite of services including commercial printing to fulfilment processes for their customers across Asia.

Here are the highlights of our conversation:

PaperOne™: Hi Mr. Jaya, thank you for taking time to sit down with us. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you do at Yamagata.

Mr. Jaya: Happy to speak with you guys. I have been working at Yamagata for about 26 years now, where I am the Assistant General Manager. As part of my role, I also head the engineering, maintenance, planning and production departments, where I oversee the day-to-day operations. As a Japanese firm, I also ensure that we all strictly adhere to the 5 S of the Kaizen for an efficient and lean manufacturing process.

PaperOne™: What an extensive scope of work. It seems like Yamagata dabbles in end-to-end manufacturing services. Can you share more about this?

Mr. Jaya: While we are a printing company with manufacturing printing as our core offering, our goal is to eventually become the first-choice media solutions provider across Malaysia and in other parts of Asia. Currently, we serve a wide range of Japanese electronics companies in Malaysia like Sony, where we specialise in designing and printing their instruction manuals.

PaperOne™: That’s very interesting. What would you say makes Yamagata stand out from the rest of your competitors?

Mr. Jaya: I would say that our operating system is what makes us stand out from the competition. The way we streamline our workflow, for instance, is something that we are proud of. Apart from that, we also ensure that regardless of role, all our staff undergo strict safety and quality management training.

PaperOne™: Tell us more about Yamagata’s partnership with APRIL.

Mr. Jaya: Yamagata Malaysia has been a partner of APRIL for about 10 years. PaperOne™ and Yamagata have formed close relations that have been vital in the success of both parties, and it has been such a pleasure working with the team. Not only do they provide consistently high quality paper, working with them has also helped us incur lower costs. At present, we get our supply of offset paper from PaperOne™.

PaperOne™: As such a big establishment in Malaysia, what are some CSR efforts that your team undertakes?

Mr. Jaya: CSR is a huge thing for Yamagata! While our focus is largely on the education sector, we are also involved in blood donation drives annually where we get our employees to participate as a donor. In terms of education, we work closely with many polytechnics across Malaysia, where we offer scholarships and internship programmes to students who are keen on pursuing a career in the printing industry.

PaperOne™:It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, Mr. Jaya. One last question from us… in your opinion, how do you think technology has affected the paper and pulp business?

Mr. Jaya: Likewise. It's interesting to see that there has been an increase in the number of manuals we produce, despite the rising popularity of technology. Perhaps when it comes to items such as instructional manuals, people still prefer having physical copies over the use of e-books as they are easier to access and store for future use.

To find the most suitable PaperOne™ products for your business, contact us at customer_service@aprilasia.com