News room

ITOKI CORPORATION (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Koji Minato) completely renovated the office area of its Kanto Factory in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture on Thursday, September 11, 2025.

This initiative serves as a pioneering example of spatially focused human capital management at a manufacturing base, aiming to draw out the capabilities and motivation of each employee and improve engagement and productivity throughout the organization.

Manufacturing sites are currently facing a complex array of increasingly serious issues, including labor shortages, ensuring safety, and improving productivity and creating innovation. In order to address these issues, it is essential to create a workplace environment where each employee can continue to work in a healthy and positive manner.

Furthermore, even in factories where production efficiency has traditionally been emphasized, in recent years there has been a demand for them to function as "places of innovation" that generate ideas and technological innovations on-site, and "investment in space" is attracting attention.

To solve these issues and maximize the power of the production site, the Itoki Kanto Factory completely renovated its office area. Employees working on-site envisioned an ideal way of working, shared ideas, and completely revamped the old office that had been in use for 17 years.

In the future, we plan to allow visitors to tour the facility as a showroom, and aim to contribute to solving corporate challenges by serving as a model for "spatial human capital management" in the manufacturing industry.

This renovation was promoted under the spatial concept of "Challenge to Craft" as an effort to embody the "future way of working" on manufacturing sites.

The project was led by the project manager and proceeded as a co-creation project, carefully listening to the opinions of employees working on-site. When considering the concept and spatial zoning, surveys and workshops were conducted, and the on-site members themselves shared their ideas to make them concrete.

At the heart of this initiative is the idea that we value the balance between the health of our workers and the appeal of manufacturing, and that an environment where employees can continue to work in a healthy and positive manner is what supports the creation of better products.

Based on these values, the two perspectives of "an evolving factory" and "working with enthusiasm" were set as the pillars of the space design. The "evolving factory" reflects the idea of it being a place that "encourages the challenge of constantly creating better products," while the "working with enthusiasm" reflects the idea of "an environment that fosters vitality and a sense of unity, based on the premise of safety and security."

These are practical solutions that utilize the power of space to address common issues facing the manufacturing industry, such as labor shortages, ensuring safety, and balancing productivity and innovation, from the field.

The biggest challenge in this renovation was reducing the amount of paperwork. Many documents were required to be kept by law, and the overflowing paperwork was taking up space, but by thoroughly disposing of documents and organizing the warehouse, we were able to reduce the amount of paperwork in the office area by about 80%.

This creates more space and makes for a more comfortable office design.

The latest renovation has created a variety of spaces, including group desking seats, concentration seats, solo booths, collaboration areas, laboratories, and cafes, so that employees can choose where to work depending on their mood and the nature of their work. This has made it possible to realize flexible working styles even on the manufacturing floor.

The interior design employs "Tsumugu (Timeless)," one of Itoki's design guidelines, "ITOKI SENSE 2025." A high-quality, comfortable space that makes use of natural materials such as wood and stone creates a comfortable working environment.

Furthermore, key areas of the interior use our own products, such as partitions and racks produced at our Kanto factory. Incorporating products that we have made ourselves into our workplaces creates a sense of pride and empathy, leading to the creation of a space that makes people want to work there and continue working there.

At our manufacturing sites, in addition to ensuring safety during work, "mental safety and physical safety" is also an important theme, ensuring that office workers can continue to work in good physical and mental health.

In this latest renovation, we also focused on creating an environment from this perspective. We have created a variety of spaces, including an open space with lots of greenery, a cafe where you can switch off your mind and refresh yourself between work tasks, a meeting space where you can take off your shoes and relax, and concentration seats where you can work in a quiet environment. Being able to naturally switch between "concentration" and "relaxation" depending on the nature of the work and your mood not only improves work efficiency, but also leads to mental and physical stability and maintaining motivation to work.

Creating such spaces for "rest, conversation, and switching off" is an invisible "investment in safety," and contributes to the realization of a work environment where employees can work long-term with peace of mind.

In manufacturing, even the smallest of comments or observations can have an impact on quality and safety, so it is essential to create an environment where teams can work together smoothly.

The new system eliminates assigned seats and allows each team to use their own seat flexibly, creating a "group desking system." This allows employees to work at the optimal distance depending on the relationship between each task, and creates a "responsive workplace" where information can be checked, judged, and shared instantly on the spot.

Some of the spaces have "double address seats" that encourage collaboration beyond the boundaries of teams, and other features have been incorporated to support cross-organizational collaboration and flexible team management.

Furthermore, unlike the previous office, which had assigned seats and linear movement patterns, the new office has a variety of areas distributed throughout the space, which naturally encourages people to move around and encourages spontaneous encounters and conversations, fostering opportunities for innovation.

This renovation is one of the initiatives based on the idea of "office investment that contributes to human capital investment," which Itoki practices and proposes to its customers. Similar measures have been implemented at its headquarters and other bases across the country, and the renovation of the Kanto Factory is positioned as an extension of that.

Going forward, from the perspective of "work style reform in factories," we plan to utilize this initiative in space proposals and to accept tours.

Itoki will continue to contribute to the realization of better working styles by creating spaces that bring out the potential of workers.