YAMATO Employee of the Year – Western Region – Haruki Tokunaga
03.28.2022 | Category, Blog
Congratulations to Haruki Tokunaga, who works out of YAMATO’s Los Angeles office, helping ideate and design fulfillment processes for a wide variety of businesses. Although only at YAMATO a short while, he’s earned 2021 Western Region Employee of the Year honors.
“Each product is different, so the objective is how to integrate fulfillment to work for each customer,” says Tokunaga, who came to YAMATO from Toyota.
As one of Haruki’s supervisors noted, “Many YAMATO services are simple. Freight forwarding is relatively simple. On the other hand, fulfillment is very complicated.”
On the surface, fulfillment does seem simple. It’s making sure that an order is packaged correctly and delivered on time to the customer. However, some YAMATO customers require orders packed and shipped the same day. Some businesses are B2B, B2C or even C2C. Sometimes items fulfilled need to be grouped into packages before sending. Many customers need warehouse space to hold their inventory, then ship at a moment’s notice to any place on the planet.
Tokunaga adds that there’s also scale and cost to consider. “Some clients need thousands of bottles shipped out each week, others just a few dozen items,” he says. “No matter the size, each customer needs a system that maximizes their sales while keeping costs low.”
Like many employees at YAMATO, Tokunaga loves the customer service side of the work. “It’s a really good environment here, because everyone is working to add value and efficiency.”