2016年3月1日 星期二

3th Visit - Yakult

The History behind Yakult:

Dr. Minoru Shirota was the great creator of Yakult. He was a doctor of medicine and had begun his studies on the topic 1921 at the Kyoto Imperial University in Japan. During that period, Japan still hadn’t reached its economic prosperity and thus suffered a lot of poor sanitation conditions. Due to that, a lot pf people caught infectious diseases and eventually died. Dr. Shirota couldn’t bare such reality and decided to do something about it. In the research that he had conducted, he found out that lactobacillus was an element that suppressed the bacteria that was harmful in the intestines. After meeting up with other doctors, who were volunteers, they developed a drink that included the lactobacillus in the tasty beverage, that was drinkable by everyone as it was kept at a low price.
Dr. Shirota basically had his mind keen on preventing illnesses after watching his friends pass away. He didn’t want his focus to be on curing the sick but on prevent the disease as a whole. Thus, he built his drink on three aspects;
  1. It needs to help prevent diseases
  2. It needs to be at a price that everyone can afford and protect themselves
  3. Keeping the intestinal tract of humans healthy

How is Yakult made in the factories?

Explanation of Process

1. Skimmed milk powder is mixed with the other ingredients, like sugar, glucose and filtered, sterilized water to make a sweet milky solution
2. The solution is sterilized at a high temperature, destroying any available bacteria.
3. Temperature of tank is reduced to 37’C and live Lactobacullis casei Shirota strain is added. Solution is allowed to ferment for about a week
4. Tank is chilled to around 2’C.  Sterilized flavors, syrup solutions, are added to the solution
5. On site are where the plastic bottles are produced
6. Labels are added onto the bottles and are later packed in packs of five
7. Products finished are refrigerated before delivery to stores


Ingredients of the Drink

During the visit, the speaker also made us guess the number of ingredients the drink contained and what they were.
The ingredients are as follows;
-       Skimmed milk powder
-       Sugar
-       Glucose
-       Natural & Natural identical flavor
-       Water
-       Probiotic (L.casei strain Shirota)

Effectiveness of Yakult?

Yakult is one of the most highly concentrated drinks containing probiotics in the market. It has over 6.5 billion (L.casei strain Shirota) in each bottle. Our digestive system consists of both beneficial and harmful bacteria. Unbalanced diets, lack of sleep and stress gives way for the harmful bacteria to double up, leading to poor digestion or weakness in the immunity system. Thus, with Yakult, the probiotics increases the number of beneficial bacteria and to take over the harmful ones.

Questions and Answers:

  1. How do you forecast the market demand in different distribution channels?
    Yakult forecasts it based on historical data collected previously that suit the day, weather and other affecting factors. Factors such as the weather is important because it affects the buying behavior of consumers. For example, when it rains, the purchase rate is lower compares to when it is hot.  Thus, they really need to pay attention to the observatory.  

    Another way to forecast is based on the sales among stores in different areas. For example, to enable no losses, stores that sell out faster can get products from nearby stores that still have stock.  

  2. What is the most significant supply chain crisis in your company history and how do you tackle the problems?
    The most significant crisis our company had gone through would be when our delivery truck had issues on its way and all the products were sent for questioning and for a quality check immediately. All contaminated drinks were thrown away and quickly replaced by fresh new drinks by the Yakult Company and those still safe and sound were re-distributed. The company issued more trucks to help and speed up the delivery process, due to the delay caused.

  3. How does quality control help Yakult ensure the product quality? Once a quality problem is occurred, what Yakult can do?
    Quality control plays an important role in terms of standards. Yakult has regular quality checks, in which they randomly selected some bottles and send them to the quality testing room, in which the drinks are assessed to ensure they are of high quality. This not only helps the image of Yakult in front of customers, but also in front of their partners.

    Once a quality problem is occurred, such as in the Yakult drink itself, they would take corrective actions to understand the reason why the drink was not of quality, what led to it being like that and are there any ways of protecting it.

    The way Yakult sets quality standards with its retailers, requires them to place the drinks in a refrigerator.  Also, if there are any issues, the customer can call the company directly, and they will collect the product and return new ones as a substitute as they investigate the  problematic drink.
  4. How does the company maintain its product quality under different temperature change during transportation?
    The company has promised to keep the drink under 10°C at all times, even during transportation. Basically in order to help facilitate this, they have their own refrigerated trucks to ensure quality of their products. And for retailers that may not have resources to own a fridge at their store while selling Yakult, Yakult would give them a fridge to do so. Thus, no retailer should have any excuses in terms of refrigeration when it comes to the times for quality checks.
  5. Why does Yakult HK have less favor than the other neighbor countries such as Singapore?
    Hong Kong has less flavors of Yakult drinks when compared to Singapore because the concept of Yakult already exists in Singapore and more flavors were needed to capture the markets attention and to add a niche. Whereas for Hong Kong, the production locations are small and doesn’t have large factories, where more machines can be places in order to create additional flavors. Moreover, HK people, based on a market research do not appear to be very fond of Yakult due to the amount of sugar it has in each drink. There would be too big of a risk if people end up not buying it as well.  

  6. As the expiration date of the product is 30 days, the estimation of market demand becomes critical to the profit. How do you make and estimation of the market demand in an effective way?
    Due to the 30-day limitation, the estimated demand for the product is made two weeks prior to the date received. Historical data and other known factors, such as the weather are used to make a close estimate, as well as approximate sales over holidays and particular celebrations.

    Also, to better enhance the estimate, close relationships are maintained with the store managers to get a better understanding of the stores reality as well, which may differ amongst different areas.
  7. In order to protect the brand reputation and maintain the quality standard, what are your criteria in choosing the suppliers?
    The job selecting suppliers for Hong Kong’s Yakult manufacturing is done by the headquarters located in Japan. Japan selects some international supplier they know well in order to ensure the quality of the company. Those delivered mostly consist of the probiotic bacteria to ensure the quality and standards. The other ingredients are supplied by Hong Kong partners that also have a long history with Yakult.

  8. What technologies do you adopt for quality control?

    For Yakult the key technology would be the machines used for developing the bacteria and probiotics, especially to ensure the number of live lactobacillus. They need to measure the ingredients accurately.

  9. The population of Yakult drinks is increasing in the Mainland nowadays. How does Yakult adjust the production plan to respond to the rapid increase in demand?
    Since Hong Kong has had Yakult for quite some time now, it has reached its maturity level, especially since 2001. However, lots of Mainlanders visiting HK have been spending on Yakult. Thus Yakult has been constantly expanding in the mainland, opening up new factories.

    Based on festivities and inbound tourism to HK, Yakult can better forecast the demand then.
     
  10. There are many growing competitors from China these years. How does Yakult stand out from the market to gain back the market share?
    Yakult stands out from the market in terms of providing transparency to its customers to know more about the value of the company and reason of its existence. This enables them to build on their brand image.  They mainly do this through the visits they hold at their production office. They also have several marketing campaigns to boost up the sales and market value.  

Reflections:

Overall, our group was very over-whelmed with the experience we encountered at the factory, Knowing Yakult all these years, we had never tried to understand the importance of the drink and the efforts the company had put into it. The most unique moment during the visit, other than seeing all the machineries and the operations were firstly the air cleaner. A certain blow-drying type of door we had to pass through to ensure our cleanliness. It was quite interesting and the second would be getting to try the fresh Yakult. It was special because we hadn’t seen it before, as for the Yakult, the taste really changes after a few days. The one tried at the company was super sweet. Yakult is already criticized for adding too much sugar. However, the sweetness is already less when drinking it a few days later compared to earlier. Another interesting finding our group had was about the low-sugar Yakult. It was expressed as even better by the company representative and how people in other nations like Korea drink it almost everyday to maintain their weight and slim down. However, despite all the value-added elements of being healthy, having low sugar and helping one tone down weight wise, it still rose curiosity on why the Hong Kong market preferred buying the regular one compared to the low-sugar one.

References:


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