The rotten carrot that is Kobe Steel is bringing out more and more mud after pulling it out. President Hiroya Kawasaki held another press conference last Friday to apologize again, and the number of customers affected by his data falsification has soared from 200 to 500.

The Japanese government gave Kobe Steel two weeks to investigate, and a month to announce the reasons and countermeasures. Now the companies implicated are busy investigating themselves and thinking of countermeasures, in addition to Japanese car companies, GM, Ford, Hyundai and Kia have also been affected, and there are also companies that are not even customers are busy rumors to clear the relationship, such as Daimler and PSA.

Businesses bloomed globally, but it is difficult to cover the operating deficits

Kobe Steel, established in 1905, is a veritable century-old company, which has been in the business of producing steel. a veritable century-old company. Its size in Japan's steel manufacturing enterprises is not the largest, can only be ranked third, but it is not the production of ordinary steel products, but to high value-added special metal materials, so in this field Kobe Steel is one of the world's top two, a lot of military enterprises, ah, high-precision manufacturing enterprises are its customers.

While the business can be said to blossom globally, but in fact Kobe Steel's business situation is not as good as it seems on the surface. 2015 and 2016 Kobe Steel's financial reports are in the red, sales and operating profit is declining year by year.

Deficit how to do, it is necessary to start from the cost savings, Kobe Steel to control the cost of one of the ways, is to cut corners, in the product raw material ratios on the article, the production of metal materials can not reach the strength of customer requirements hardness how to do, then change the product testing report.

President Alexander: global competition is too fierce

Kobe Steel's president Kawasaki Bo also is a typical start from the grassroots, a lifetime of dedication to the business of the Japanese professional managers, he was 58 years old when he became president, but took over is not what a thriving industry, but the internal and external problems of a company.

With more than 10,000 employees to feed, and a sluggish domestic economy that has put young people off buying cars, Kobe Steel must expand its business to overseas markets, but it can't rely only on its domestic automotive customers.

But overseas rivals more ruthless ah, China and South Korea are big steel, the production of high-grade steel capacity is also increasingly strong. As competition heats up, the result is lower and lower prices, so it's harder to turn a profit.

And Kawasaki Hiroshi is just a professional manager, it is not his family industry, in other words a part-time job, the only thing people ask of you is to have a good performance report, do not expect you to lead the transformation of the company to success and soaring, at least can not be ruined in your hands, right.

In 2014, after Kawasaki Hiroya took office, he put forward the goal of "2015 profit of 100 billion yen", but the result was a loss of 8 billion, and in 2016, the loss increased to 12 billion. You can imagine how much pressure President Kawasaki must be under.

According to the Asahi Shimbun report, Kobe Steel, in addition to data falsification, there are many other scandals of its enterprises, such as ironworks emission data falsification, stainless steel wire strength falsification, etc., this enterprise can be said to be from the bottom to the top from the inside to the outside, all the falsification as the norm.