To our shareholders and investors:
I would like to extend my best wishes for the New Year.
The continued rise of emerging markets in 2012 led to an increasingly competitive environment for many Japanese corporations, and the value-added associated with the "Made in Japan" trademark that was once so well-recognized in markets around the world entered a clear transition.At the same time,attitudes in the workplace such as the status associated with lifetime employment at a leading company continue to undergo substantial change.
The OUTSOURCING Group also faced a major turning point in 2012. Our guiding principles are based on contributing to the building of a brighter and prosperous society by directing our expertise, creativity and innovative solutions to meet rapid changes in the business environment and facilitate productivity enhancements in shop-floor manufacturing (monozukuri) of Japan.
We made efforts to take these principles to an even higher level by starting to lay the groundwork for new activities that will make a significant contribution to labor markets for a wide number of industries in Japan and enable us to deal with global labor markets. Our aim has been to address the social concerns that result when struggling manufacturers are forced to restructure, shrink the workforce, and shift employment overseas.
While our company is still not strong enough to slove such far-reaching structural issues on its own, the OUTSOURCING Group has been striving to take the strategic initiative in responding to the rapid change in widely held ideas and structures that characterizes modern society. Our objective has been not to simply formulate a strategy to deal with pressing social issues as they arise, but to constantly challenge ourselves to be best positioned to anticipate leading trends and ideas.
We hope all of our stakeholders are looking forward to the dramatic progress the OUTSOURCING Group expects to achieve in 2013.
Haruhiko Doi
Chairman and CEO
OUTSOURCING Inc.