C005 Live Demonstration
1949 Words
After a while, the ladies came in carriages and their delivery boys arrived behind them. The ambassadors introduced Hiko-sama and me to the ladies, and we exchanged pleasantries. They checked the goods against their order forms and were very satisfied and paid the ambassadors while the delivery boys loaded the goods to the other party’s handcart.
I approached the owner and spoke that we have something new to present and asked her to stay. Soon all the owners of the cosmetic shops arrived and had paid for their merchandise as the goods had been equally distributed.
Since the ladies are all present, several lookers gathered around to watch as they whispered among one another that a live demonstration of a revolutionary item was about to be showcased.
The STM was brought out and everyone was peering at it with curiosity and I explained that the item before them would improve their lives and they no longer needed to spend hours scrubbing their clothes in the laundry and also cut down costs for those who engage laundry services too.
After the demonstration by using the veil that covered the glass front as an example, the onlookers that gathered had increased to under 200 and it almost blocked the trading district.
After breaking down the cost to merely a few coppers per day, this made everyone excited as it was very affordable to save daily and pays to the Treasury monthly directly. They looked at the billboard and understood it.
They were impressed and some ladies even tried their hands at it and finds it very convenient. I told them for the Kurin Detergent, they can proceed to the owners of the cosmetics shop.
I held up a blank sketchpad and told them they need to write in their names and house lot so that once it’s ready, they would be contacted here to sign the papers and be the proud owners of the Seiko Tumbler Machine.
Those who were interested stepped up and wrote their names and house lot on the table that had been brought out of the office for this purpose. I went over to the saleslady to report to the ambassadors directly and inform the clients to come and sign the instalment agreement before the item be delivered to their house. She understood and took over from there.
Next, we send a note to the Blacksmith alliance and within minutes it had distributed the message to the rest of the Blacksmith in town. In ten minutes they had come and collected their orders of Refined Iron and they even complained in a good way that they have backlogged orders that they can’t meet because of the shortage of these Refined Iron.
The Refined Iron was definitely a popular commodity!
The sketchpad will be in the shop, and the ambassadors informed the sales lady to send the figures of today’s order by tomorrow morning. She nodded while the ambassadors went to the Treasury to bank in the coins of 67,000 and changed it into a slip of deposit paper under our corporate name.
I passed the 1,000 coins to Hiko-sama, and he hid it in his secret pocket of the kimono. Once we had settled our transaction, we head back to Kitakata and arrived during lunchtime. The convoy had reached back early after they had settled the shipment and had prepared to load the wagon for next day delivery to Yonezawa and stopped for lunch before continuing.
After we had lunch, Hiko-sama, and the rest returned the horses back to the stable boys and Hiko-sama made the deposit. The head of treasury was happy to meet since he saw the deposit slip was from Aizuwakamatsu.
Hiko-sama went to meet mesen-san and informed him to meet me for a while because I had informed Hiko-sama that I would need to talk to mesen-san regarding Mass production of the STM.
Mesen-san went along with Hiko-sama, and when the duo returned, I invited Mesen-san for some snacks and tea. He obliged as it worried him that the machines had failed.
“Masters, you wanted to see me? Are the machines OK? Did they perform well? Is anything wrong with the operations? Did it leak or somehow?”
“No, Mesen-san... Everything worked well for the machines. There is nothing wrong with it. I would like to highlight, however, there is a slight problem that only you can handle it alone.”
“Problem? What’s the problem and I will try my best to rectify it soonest possible.”
“There is a problem and a solution. The problem is the space that you have right now in manufacturing the machines. Don’t you think the area is small? Would you like to have a dedicated space where you can work freely and leave to return home on the upper level of the workshop?”
“If we can find a bigger workshop to work in, definitely the output would be increased. Right now we are running on a 2 12-hour shift and 4 men are working on 2 machines at the same time. What would you propose, Masters?”
“We would build 3 more warehouse here and there is one particular warehouse that can operate 2 lines. If we operate an assembly line here would it be a hassle to train those workers? Would ladies be able to handle such tasks?”
“The assembly would not be much of a problem, even someone as young and able to handle a screwdriver or wrench could perform the simple tasks. However, by the end of the day, I need to monitor and perform quality assurance on those machines before I could release it to the public.”
“How is your nephew coping, is he able to be a recognised machinist by now?”
“Masters, he can be seen as a qualified machinist right now.”
“You said that you had 2 shifts, right? We could promote any of the workers in the day and night as a machinist apprentice and able to perform excellent quality control as you and your nephew are?”
“I could say yes, Masters. Each shift has a capable man who could be a machinist apprentice.”
“That’s good to hear that. Now listen carefully I would promote you to head machinist while your nephew is the machinist taking over your current position.”
“Your job is to promote the men capable to be apprentices, thus ensuring that the quality of the work done. I would not allow any room for errors, even if its marginal. Everything has to be clockwork.”
“Since you have one apprentice in both day and night each, that leaves the positions empty for another 2 more manpower, am I right?”
“The apprentices would ensure that quality assurance is tip-top on the interest of Fausto Japan, so find another 2 men quick so we could add in their payroll with Hiko-sama.”
“Next, you said as long as a girl can operate a wrench or screwdriver, would your workers able to produce the knocked down components known as (KDC) and Deliver it here so that the girls could finish the assembly while you and your nephew monitor them?”
“That would be most appropriate. Once the KDC had been made the assembly would only take less than a day to complete one. If girls were to handle them, I guess they could assemble it in 4 hours by 3 girls each.”
“What do you have on mind, Masters?”
“I would like you to travel here to give guidance and supervisions to the girls that we would use, right? There won’t be need of a work table or anything and they could work it on the floor itself?”
“Yes Masters, they can work on a floor on an elevated platform and assemble the parts there. Upon assembly, we would run the dry and wet test and make sure everything is working like a well-oiled machine.”
“I would provide you with 24 girls per 8-hour shift here, each 3 working on the assembly at the same time and completing a machine by 4 hours, right? Meaning per shift they could produce 2 machines by 3 girls.”
“In short, a single shift alone could assemble 16 machines. Am I correct in this statement? In short, on a 24 hours cycle, with a manpower of 72 girls and 16 machines per shift, the production of the machines would amount to be 48. Let’s say 35 to 40 per day with a few minor adjustments need to tinker here and there.”
“My most important question is how fast can your workers produce the KDC? And would you be able to shift your operations here and commit with your nephew, so each one of you takes a 12-hour shift work, to ensure that the work done here is smooth? I would like your nephew to work on the 1st shift while you take the second. Would that be alright?”
“I agree with Masters, your planning and forecast are very wide and at an average of 30 machines per day we could go far and produce more results.”
“Kitakata has a backlog of 110 machines based on 1 demo. Once word of mouth spreads, everyone would want one machine in their households. Take, for example, the outermost District has 440 households. And if everyone orders one, would it take a millennium to supply every one of them? This figure does not include the commoners and the nobles.”
“We had just returned from Aizuwakamatsu and had done a demo in the trading district and we have over 200 spectators and I would expect the orders to be triple than Kitakata as there are over 40,000 residents and the figures are nearly the same as Yonezawa and Shibata.”
“The saleslady at Aizuwakamatsu is taking the orders as we speak, and they would send a total sales order to us in the morning tomorrow.”
“The more the machines are being produced, the higher commission you and your nephew receives. And as for the apprentices that will be promoted soon, Hiko-sama would arrange for their salary increment.”
“Sit down and think on how much you could produce the barrels, the stand, the spindle, and the cogwheel. And let’s enjoy the snacks and tea brought by our cooks. It’s an offence if you don’t eat or else the cooks won’t prepare anything like this for us.”
I took a snack that has been made by grating tapioca and steamed with grated coconut, covered in banana leaves and served with a spread of Molten palm sugar on it. Yum yum... I’m getting fat on all these delicacies the ‘aunties" had prepared. Hahahahaha.
Hearing my last sentence, the machinist took the snack and ate it, afraid of offending the’ aunties’ and being chased with a ladle around the courtyard.
Later Mesen-san told me he had never had snacks like this or for quite some time since he had to face a tight budget and have to tighten his belt a few notches to maintain his daily livelihood.
We explain to him that the meals here were taken care of by the 2 cooks, 6 times a day!
“6 times a day? I could only afford 1 meal a day before you both came over our shop and now we could have extras for our meals. Yes, I’d like to work here in your compound and train the girls to ensure they performed an excellent job! We won’t disappoint you, Masters!”
“I will only gather the statistics after I had seen the workers produce the KDC. When would you expect me to move the operations here, Masters?”
“In about 5 days from now. There would be at least 100 more people in these grounds the next time you are here.”
- Writer
