John Payne

Why Yaskawa? - “We don’t fail our customers.”

BIO:

Original:

I came to Yaskawa via technology acquisition in the robot business back in the very early 90’s. Prior to being at Yaskawa I had worked in a university lab and at one of the early Machine Vision and robot control startups.

Working for a start up in a new technology is exciting but there are also some down sides. I have always had a customer centric view of business. A lot of what we delivered from that robotic startup was being done for the very first time and “it works” was more a comment of amazement than an actual virtue of the product. Winning a big order and moving the stock price of the company in the follow weeks was exciting. But, it wasn’t always clear that we had done the best for our cutomers.

I always sought to engage deeply with customers. One of my good long-term friends I met on my second day of work. His son works for us today. The most reassuring thing about working for Yaskawa is that we don’t fail our customers. We care about our products and how we deliver them. We don’t rush things to market and we make long term commitments to assure the quality of what we deliver. Those qualities make how you relate to everyone in your sphere of business more comfortable and rewarding. It’s not something I necessarily went looking for but once experienced it would have been hard to go in a different direction. So, I have been here for 34 years.

Revision?:

I came to Yaskawa via technology acquisition in the robot business in the early 1990s. Before Yaskawa, I worked in a university lab and an early machine vision and robot control startup.

Working for a startup in a new technology was intriguing, but there were some downsides. I have a customer-centric view of business, so while winning a big order and moving the company's stock price was exciting, it wasn’t always clear that we had done the best for our customers.

I always sought to engage deeply with customers. At Yaskawa, one of my good long-term friends I met on my second day of work, and his son works for us today. The most reassuring thing about working for Yaskawa is that we don’t fail our customers. We care about our products and how we deliver them. We don’t rush things to market, and we make long-term commitments to assure the quality of what we deliver. Those qualities make how you relate to everyone in your business more comfortable and rewarding. It’s not something I necessarily went looking for, but once experienced, it would have been hard to go in a different direction. I have been at Yaskawa for 34 years.