No Routine Days at Daikin
Where Challenges and
Opportunities Flourish

In my final year of graduate school, I applied to Daikin at the urging of my father. He was teaching a refrigeration course at a high school and would often take his students on field trips to Daikin. His experience with the technology and corporate culture at Daikin made a deep impression on him. It was the same for me. The moment I first came into contact with Daikin, its people and environment, I knew that Daikin was the place for me. Sixteen years have past since then. Beginning in sales as the liaison between Daikin Europe (Belgium) and its various distributors, I later shifted to marketing with a focus on business planning and budget management and was even posted to South Africa. Currently, I work as a project manager for the strategic planning department, which has the mission of driving the strategic planning process throughout the Daikin Europe Group. The work provides me with high job satisfaction. In addition to assessing new business opportunities, I’m involved with undertaking and leading strategic projects for which our department provides the decision framework, analysis, strategic options, and long-term targets

During my posting to South Africa, I was responsible for a large-scale SCM project for consolidating warehouses scattered over South Africa to one central warehouse in Johannesburg. Countless discussions occurred with various logistics companies over many months, and plans were drafted concerning imports, deliveries, inventory transfers—whatever was necessary for the overall supply flow—until we were finally able to make our first freight shipment to the central warehouse. Seeing the first trucks arrive gave me a deep sense of satisfaction for all those months of preparation. That moment was extremely meaningful to me. Because work occupies a large part of our lives, I try to achieve that same degree of purpose everyday by understanding the bigger picture and fitting whatever I am doing that day into the long-term goals of the company. Equally important are my colleagues and the way in which we combine our strengths and complement each other’s abilities in working toward the right outcome. That’s how we can say it’s possible because it’s Daikin.

There are two reasons why I love working at Daikin. First, Daikin respects its people and spurs employee growth through training and colleague support. Throughout my career, I’ve always been able to count on a level of support that goes far beyond the ordinary framework of an organization. Very often we refer to our corporate culture as the ‘Daikin family’ because of the strong bonds extending to every corner of the Daikin Group. And there is another reason I love Daikin. The company provides opportunities for job rotation and new postings that occur not only within one’s own assigned company but also at companies located around the globe. Daikin gives its employees, quite literally, a world of opportunities to grow and take on new challenges.

Currently, I’m working on multiple projects for building a structure for new business development. Although there may be many challenges to overcome to achieve results in line with a proposed business plan, the euphoria you feel when a project is done makes the effort all worthwhile. Moreover, because the territory of a new project crosses many different fields, there is also great delight in acquiring new knowledge from a project. The environment here is best suited for people that seek self-growth by always taking on new challenges because Daikin is constantly changing and growing. With the many challenges and opportunities provided at Daikin, no two days are ever the same. I personally feel that it is the right fit for anyone seeking an active role on the international stage.