Director Interview Shoichi Kobayashi

What is your mission?

The primary mission of the Digital Twin Division is to turn a profit.
Last term, the entire division worked towards the goal of turning a profit, but unfortunately, our sales fell slightly short of the target. This term, we are starting with the firm intention of achieving this goal.

Please tell us about future developments for the business division.

Starting this term, the ROM Group and the Communication Design Group have joined forces with the Data Kitchen Group to form a single unit. We will leverage our areas of expertise to offer a wide range of approaches to our customers. We aim to meet various needs by packaging data acquisition, processing, and applications.

Furthermore, in order to deliver higher quality and even better products, collaboration with our Chinese local subsidiary, Shenyang Mokimoto Industrial Co., Ltd. (SKI), is indispensable. We will strengthen our alliance with SKI and, together as a team, invigorate the Digital Twin division. We believe that partnering with a variety of companies—such as digital twin-related firms and software development manufacturers—is essential for future business expansion and technological advancement.

What is the most memorable thing about your work?

The most memorable thing for me is digitizing the aerial photo negatives owned by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan.
Despite the aging machinery and dwindling materials, our proposal to digitize was successful, and KIMOTO undertook 95% of the work. We are now utilizing that data and selling it through the Japan Map Center.

What is the impact of COVID-19 (novel coronavirus)?

We cannot visit customers directly, but we have been able to carry out most of our contracted work from home, so we haven't felt much impact. While many other companies cannot operate without going to the office, we have communicated to our clients that KIMOTO can work without issues, which has led to us receiving work from several companies. Although there are challenges in communicating with customers, we have realized that our ability to work from home and our established cloud environment are KIMOTO's strengths and assets.

While SKI is also carrying out operations, our own capacity has almost fully recovered. However, there is concern that in the future an increasing number of private companies may hold off on investments due to this impact, which could affect our business.

Please tell us about the work principles you have valued.

My work principle is to always put the customer first.
The greatest satisfaction comes from making our customers happy, and that has never changed. I want to continue working with the primary goal of pleasing our customers.

Do you have any aspirations for what kind of company you want KIMOTO to be?

I want to build a company that people in any industry or business sector will think of saying "KIMOTO" when they have a problem. I want to create a company that our clients will always praise, saying 'That company is amazing, wonderful, the "KIMOTO to turn to in times of trouble" that we can consult about anything.'

※The above content is all from the time of the interview (June 2020).