live of my life

Friday, February 20, 2009

Soichiro Honda

Amati kendaraan yang melintasi jalan raya. Pasti, mata Anda selalu terbentur pada kendaraan bermerek Honda, baik berupa mobil maupun motor. Merek kendaran ini memang selalu menyesaki padatnya lalu lintas. Karena itu barangkali memang layak disebut sebagai raja jalanan.

Namun, pernahkah Anda tahu, sang pendiri kerajaan bisnis Honda -- Soichiro Honda -- selalu diliputi kegagalan saat menjalani kehidupannya sejak kecil hingga berbuah lahirnya imperium bisnis mendunia itu. Dia bahkan tidak pernah bisa menyandang gelar insinyur.
Ia bukan siswa yang memiliki otak cemerlang. Di kelas, duduknya tidak pernah di depan, selalu menjauh dari pandangan guru.

Saat merintis bisnisnya, Soichiro Honda selalu diliputi kegagalan. Ia sempat jatuh sakit, kehabisan uang, dikeluarkan dari kuliah. Namun, ia terus bermimpi dan bermimpi. Dan, impian itu akhirnya terjelma dengan bekal ketekunan dan kerja keras. ''Nilaiku jelek di sekolah. Tapi saya tidak bersedih, karena dunia saya di sekitar mesin, motor dan sepeda,'' tutur Soichiro, yang meninggal pada usia 84 tahun, setelah dirawat di RS Juntendo, Tokyo , akibat mengidap lever.

Kecintaannya kepada mesin, jelas diwarisi dari ayahnya yang membuka bengkel reparasi pertanian, di dusun Kamyo, distrik Shizuko, Jepang Tengah. Di kawasan inilah dia lahir. Kala sering bermain di bengkel, ayahnya selalu memberi catut (kakak tua) untuk mencabut paku. Ia juga sering bermain di tempat penggilingan padi melihat mesin diesel yang menjadi motor penggeraknya. Di situ, lelaki kelahiran 17 November 1906 ini dapat berdiam diri berjam-jam. Tak seperti kawan sebayanya kala itu yang lebih banyak menghabiskan waktu bermain penuh suka cita. Dia memang menunjukan keunikan sejak awal.

Seperti misalnya kegiatan nekad yang dipilihnya pada usia 8 tahun, dengan bersepeda sejauh 10 mil. Itu dilakukan hanya karena ingin menyaksikan pesawat terbang.

Bersepada memang menjadi salah satu hobinya kala kanak-kanak. Dan buahnya, ketika 12 tahun, Soichiro Honda berhasil menciptakan sebuah sepeda pancal dengan model rem kaki. Sampai saat itu, di benaknya belum muncul impian menjadi usahawan otomotif. Karena dia sadar berasal dari keluarga miskin. Apalagi fisiknya lemah, tidak tampan, sehingga membuatnya selalu rendah diri.

Di usia 15 tahun, Honda hijrah ke kota , untuk bekerja di Hart Shokai Company. Bossnya, Saka Kibara, sangat senang melihat cara kerjanya. Honda teliti dan cekatan dalam soal mesin. Setiap suara yang mencurigakan, setiap oli yang bocor, tidak luput dari perhatiannya. Enam tahun bekerja di situ, menambah wawasannya tentang permesinan. Akhirnya, pada usia 21 tahun, Saka Kibara mengusulkan membuka suatu kantor cabang di Hamamatsu . Tawaran ini tidak ditampiknya.

Di Hamamatsu prestasi kerjanya kian membaik. Ia selalu menerima reparasi yang ditolak oleh bengkel lain. Kerjanya pun cepat memperbaiki mobil pelanggan sehingga berjalan kembali. Karena itu, jam kerjanya tak jarang hingga larut malam, dan terkadang sampai subuh. Yang menarik, walau terus kerja lembur otak jeniusnya tetap kreatif.

Kejeniusannya membuahkan fenomena. Pada zaman itu, jari-jari mobil terbuat dari kayu, hingga tidak baik untuk kepentingan meredam goncangan. Menyadari ini, Soichiro punya gagasan untuk menggantikan ruji-ruji itu dengan logam.

Hasilnya luar biasa. Ruji-ruji logamnya laku keras, dan diekspor ke seluruh dunia.

Pada usia 30 tahun, Honda menandatangani patennya yang pertama. Setelah menciptakan ruji. Lalu Honda pun ingin melepaskan diri dari bosnya, membuat usaha bengkel sendiri. Mulai saat itu dia berpikir, spesialis apa yang dipilih ? Otaknya tertuju kepada pembuatan ring piston, yang dihasilkan oleh bengkelnya sendiri pada 1938. Lalu, ditawarkannya karya itu ke sejumlah pabrikan otomotif.

Sayang, karyanya itu ditolak oleh Toyota, karena dianggap tidak memenuhi standar. Ring Piston buatannya tidak lentur, dan tidak laku dijual. Ia ingat reaksi teman-temannya terhadap kegagalan itu dan menyesalkan dirinya keluar dari bengkel milik Saka Kibara. Akibat kegagalan itu, Honda jatuh sakit cukup serius. Dua bulan kemudian, kesehatannya pulih kembali. Ia kembali memimpin bengkelnya. Tapi, soal ring pinston itu, belum juga ada solusinya.

Demi mencari jawaban, ia kuliah lagi untuk menambah pengetahuannya tentang mesin.

Siang hari, setelah pulang kuliah, dia langsung ke bengkel mempraktekkan pengetahuan yang baru diperoleh. Tetapi, setelah dua tahun menjadi mahasiswa, ia akhirnya dikeluarkan karena jarang mengikuti kuliah. ''Saya merasa sekarat, karena ketika lapar tidak diberi makan, melainkan dijejali penjelasan bertele-tele tentang hukum makanan dan pengaruhnya, '' ujar Honda, yang diusia mudanya gandrung balap mobil. Kepada rektornya, ia jelaskan kuliahnya bukan mencari ijazah. Melainkan pengetahuan. Penjelasan ini justru dianggap penghinaan. Tapi dikeluarkan dari perguruan tinggi bukan akhir segalanya. Berkat kerja kerasnya, desain ring pinston-nya diterima pihak Toyota yang langsung memberikan kontrak. Ini membawa Honda berniat mendirikan pabrik. Impiannya untuk mendirikan pabrik mesinpun serasa kian dekat di pelupuk mata.

Tetapi malangnya, niatan itu kandas. Jepang, karena siap perang, tidak memberikan dana kepada masyarakat. Bukan Honda kalau menghadapi kegagalan lalu menyerah pasrah. Dia lalu nekad mengumpulkan modal dari sekelompok orang untuk mendirikan pabrik.

Namun lagi-lagi musibah datang. Setelah perang meletus, pabriknya terbakar, bahkan hingga dua kali kejadian itu menimpanya.

Honda tidak pernah patah semangat. Dia bergegas mengumpulkan karyawannya. Mereka diperintahkan mengambil sisa kaleng bensol yang dibuang oleh kapal Amerika Serikat, untuk digunakan sebagai bahan mendirikan pabrik.

Penderitaan sepertinya belum akan selesai. Tanpa diduga, gempa bumi meletus
menghancurkan pabriknya, sehingga diputuskan menjual pabrik ring pinstonnya ke Toyota . Setelah itu, Honda mencoba beberapa usaha lain. Sayang semuanya gagal.

Akhirnya, tahun 1947, setelah perang, Jepang kekurangan bensin. Di sini kondisi ekonomi Jepang porak poranda. Sampai-sampai Honda tidak dapat menjual mobilnya akibat krisis moneter itu. Padahal dia ingin menjual mobil itu untuk membeli makanan bagi keluarganya.

Dalam keadaan terdesak, ia lalu kembali bermain-main dengan sepeda pancalnya. Karena memang nafasnya selalu berbau rekayasa mesin, dia pun memasang motor kecil pada sepeda itu. Siapa sangka, sepeda motor-- cikal bakal lahirnya mobil Honda -- itu diminati oleh para tetangga. Jadilah dia memproduksi sepeda bermotor itu. Para tetangga dan kerabatnya berbondong-bondong memesan, sehingga Honda kehabisan stok. Lalu Honda kembali mendirikan pabrik motor. Sejak itu, kesuksesan tak pernah lepas dari tangannya. Motor Honda berikut mobilnya, menjadi raja jalanan dunia,
termasuk Indonesia.

Semasa hidup Honda selalu menyatakan, jangan dulu melihat keberhasilanya dalam menggeluti industri otomotif. Tapi lihatlah kegagalan-kegagalan yang dialaminya.

''ORANG MELIHAT KESUKSESAN SAYA HANYA SATU PERSEN.TAPI, MEREKA TIDAK MELIHAT 99 PERSEN KEGAGALAN SAYA,'' tuturnya. Ia memberikan petuah, ''KETIKA ANDA MENGALAMI KEGAGALAN, MAKA SEGERALAH MULAI KEMBALI BERMIMPI. DAN MIMPIKANLAH MIMPI BARU.''

Jelas kisah Honda ini merupakan contoh, bahwa sukses itu bisa diraih seseorang dengan modal seadanya, tidak pintar di sekolah, dan hanya berasal dari keluarga miskin.


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Soichiro Honda




The Man Behind The Legend

Throughout his life, Soichiro Honda never forgot the day he became a small figure who ran hopelessly after the first motor car he ever saw.

Long before it actually reached Yamahigashi, a small village in Japan's Shizuoka prefecture (now called Tenryu-shi), its own extraordinary noise heralded its imminent arrival. The small boy who heard the rumble was at first astonished, then excited, and finally enthralled, by it.

Later he would describe that moment as one of those life-changing experiences. He was seeing his first car, and as he began to tremble the closer it drew, and the dust cloud of its passage engulfed him, something inside him was triggered off.

"I turned and chased after that car for all I was worth," he said later. "I could not understand how it could move under its own power. And when it had driven past me, without even thinking why I found myself chasing it down the road, as hard as I could run."

He had no chance of catching it, and the experience became a symbol for his life: always he was chasing something that was just beyond his reach. By the time the road was empty and the car long departed, the young boy continued to stand there breathing in its gasoline stench. When he came upon a drop of its precious lifeblood spilled on the dusty track, he dropped to his knees and sniffed the oily stain like a man in a desert smelling water.

Soichiro Honda was born in Yamahigashi on November 17 1906. His father, Gihei Honda, was the local blacksmith but could turn his hands to most things, including dentistry when the need arose. His mother, Mika, was a weaver.

Honda's subsequent spirit of adventure and determination to explore the development of new technology had its roots in his childhood. The family was not wealthy, but Gihei Honda instilled into his children the ethic of hard work, and a love of mechanical things. Soichiro soon learned how to whet the blades of farm machinery, and how to make his own toys. A nearby rice mill was powered by a small engine, and the noise fascinated him. He would demand daily that his grandfather take him to watch it in action. At school he got the nickname 'black nose weasel', which is less derogatory in Japanese than it sounds in English, because his face was always dirty from helping his father in the forge.

Soichiro Honda's childhood days are full of examples of technical ingenuity, including using a bicycle pedal rubber to forge his family's seal on school reports that were less than promising.

The bicycles had another use: those that his father sold from the shop he subsequently opened helped Honda to hone his engineering skills. As he grew, the dream of the car on the country road acted like a magnetic force, drawing him ever closer towards things mechanical. In 1917 a pilot called Art Smith flew into the Wachiyama military airfield to demonstrate his biplane's aerobatic capabilities. Honda raided the family's petty cash box, 'borrowed' one of his father's bicycles and rode the 20 kilometers to a place he had never before visited. When he got there he soon realized that the price of admission, let alone a flight, was far beyond his meager means, but after climbing a tree he watched the plane in motion, and that was enough. When Gihei Honda learned what his son had done to get to the airfield, he was more impressed with his initiative, determination and resilience than he was angry with him for taking the money and the bike.

By 1922 Honda was working in an auto shop in Tokyo called Art Shokai. Initially he had done menial tasks, but more and more he became a trusted mechanic. He worked on the racing car Art Daimler, then the famous machine born from the marriage of a Curtiss aircraft engine and an American Mitchell chassis. The need to make parts for this monster taught him things that would be invaluable later in life.

When Shinichi Sakibahara raced the car for the first time at Tsurumi, and won the Chairman's Trophy, the young man riding alongside as his mechanic was Soichiro Honda. He was 17 years old.

As customers brought in Mercedes, Lincolns and Daimlers for attention, Honda's experience grew in proportion with his ambition. Four years after that first race he started his own Art Shokai auto shop in Hamamatsu. It opened its doors for business on the day that, thousands of miles away on Daytona Beach, Frank Lockhart crashed to his death trying to break the land speed record. April 25, 1928. The American track star and the Japanese kid lived in different worlds but had much in common besides their willingness to take a risk. Lockhart's mechanical genius had set new standards for record car design, and in the years that followed Soichiro Honda's own technological ideas would similarly revolutionize Japan's motorcycle and automobile industries.

Yet Honda himself never sought dominance in his homeland. At a time when nationalism was at its peak, he always saw the bigger picture. "I knew that if I could succeed in the world market," he said, "then automatically it would follow that we led in the Japanese market."

Employees in the Art Shokai shop soon came to understand that sloppy workmanship and poor performance would not be tolerated, but while his tool-hurling antics did not always encourage loyalty, those who stayed recognized his total determination to succeed and to establish an engineering business second to none. And Honda was sufficiently aware of his own managerial shortcomings. Honda Motor Co. Ltd. was established in September 1948, initially to build small capacity motorcycles to get Japanese workers mobile. While Honda focused his considerable energies on the engineering side, using all the experience he had painstakingly accumulated, including time out taken to study piston ring design at Hamamatsu tech and subsequent experimentation with a small engine-powered bicycle, he left the running of the company in the hands of Takeo Fujisawa. His most trusted friend and urged him to look to the long-term. They complemented one another perfectly.

When the first fruits of their partnership hit the streets it was a 98 cc two-stroke motorcycle appropriately named 'Dream'.

Several times Honda Motor Co. sailed close to the rocks in the years that followed, for both Honda and Fujisawa were gamblers who knew that expansion would only be possible with risk. Growth at one stage was unprecedented, until the purchase of state-or-the-art machinery in the early Fifties led them perilously close to bankruptcy. But Honda was never faint-hearted.

Later, when the Juno bike flopped and bankruptcy again beckoned, his reaction was to embark on the Tourist Trophy race program that would eventually make Honda's name as an international motorcycle manufacturer. It took him five years, but by 1959 Hondas were racing on the Isle of Man. Two years later they were the talk of the TT.

In 2000, Honda's management again made clear just how determined it is to win again in F1. The first effort, with the 1.5 liter V12 of 1964, came good just as the small-bore formula was ending. The subsequent three-liter V12 was over-engineered and far too heavy, yet won the Italian GP with John Surtees in 1967. But Honda's next effort brought domination throughout the late Eighties and the early Nineties, until Renault's arrival crossed over with Honda's decision to pull back in 1992.

Now once again Honda expects victories, this time from BAR and Jordan, prior to an all-out championship challenge in 2002. Such uncompromising ambition is a fundamental part of the legacy bequeathed by its founder, who died in Tokyo's Juntendo Hospital on August 5 1991, aged 84 years and eight months. "Racing is in our blood," former president Nobuhiko Kawamoto once admitted.

Soichiro Honda was the prototypical F1 engineer. He was always probing new limits of technology, always seeking better and greater feedback from the men who rode or drove the machines that bore his name. He preached the gospel that ambition was no sin, and that success was the reward for hard work and investment. Honda was the first major manufacturer to understand that motorsport was the perfect crucible in which to develop not just superior machines, but superior engineers, and today every global player in the F1 game rotates its engineers through its motorsport programs.

Yet there was more than even that to Honda. He and his wife Sachi both held private pilot's licenses, he was still skiing, hang-gliding and ballooning at 77, and he was a highly accomplished artist. And he was a man of rare understanding. He had never wanted to follow his father in the smithy or the bicycle shop, and he and Fujisawa made a pact never to force their own sons to join the company.

Today Honda continues to leave honorable footprints in the motorsport sand, for it has been racing ever since that day in 1917 when Soichiro Honda left his own footprints chasing an automobile - and a dream - down a dusty road that had no end.

Soichiro Honda - An Extraordinary Man

The Sayings Of Soichiro Honda

- "I've failed 99% of my trials, in order to succeed in the remaining 1%".

- "I've never refused competitors' visits to our factory. I've welcomed them at any time. Because I am willing to jump to new innovations when they try to follow us."

- "Honda has been choosing the hardest way, pursuing original technologies. I believe technologies borrowed from others will never become our flesh and blood".

- To engineers of a new concept car, "develop a car like motorbikes...a car, where drivers sense direct feelings of running, turning and stopping by the body".

- When the Emperor asked about innovation, "It is like falling in love. If you think it's distressing, it is unbearably distressing. If you think it is joyful, it is of supreme joy".

- "Honda's car must own a unique personality, which doesn't mean a car only for skilled drivers. It neither means a car anyone can drive with ease. We thoroughly peruse basic performance and safety, in order to create a car anyone can enjoy driving with comfort, but vividly reacts to drivers according to their skills".

- "Action without Philosophy is a lethal weapon; Philosophy without action is worthless"



Sources : www.acuritimports.com/
Photograph from : www.carddesignnews.com

by STEVIE @ 11:46 AM.