At Disco, a Japanese company that manufactures about 75% of the world's semiconductor cutting equipment, superiors do not give instructions to subordinates, and all work and decisions are made using the company's in-house currency, 'Will.'
Semiconductors are made by grinding, polishing, and cutting the raw silicon material. Disco, a Japanese company, produces the grindstones and machine tools used in this process and holds a 75% share of the global
Can you run a company as a perfect free market? Inside Disco Corp
https://www.ft.com/content/c04389a3-c672-43ce-8d9e-724668c0e490
Disco is an 87-year-old company with approximately 7,000 employees, and manufactures approximately three-quarters of the machines used in cutting, polishing and dicing semiconductors around the world.
Disco has a company app through which employees can decide their daily tasks. Employees can earn the company's currency, 'Will,' depending on the tasks they select. Below is an example of the tasks displayed on the company app.
・Translation of a 52-page legal document: 5 million Will
・Semiconductor grinding tool test: 2 million Will
・Participate in a new graduate recruitment interview: 200,000 Will
・Invoice processing: 80,000 Will
・Technical training seminars held at factories: 1.5 million Will
Not only this, employees can also present their own Will to outsource tasks and work to other employees. In fact, one team manager has asked an employee to 'plan a year-end work meeting' for 15,000 Will. Disco employees also use the company's in-house currency, Will, to use smoking rooms and reserve conference rooms for meetings.
At DISCO, there are no bosses telling their subordinates what to do. Employees are free to choose the work they want to do each day and can even move to a different team at their own will.
Employees can earn Will by performing designated tasks, and may barter with colleagues or compete in auctions to gain the right to perform tasks. Any actions that may harm the company or reduce productivity will be penalized with Will. The amount of the bonus paid every three months will also change depending on the balance of Will.
The company's internal currency, Will, was the brainchild of Disco's president, Kazuma Sekiya, who claims that this unconventional business plan is the backbone of the company's success. Since the introduction of Will, Disco's performance, employee satisfaction, and market share have all improved dramatically. Disco has also updated its internal apps more than 100 times since introducing Will in 2011.
Large Japanese companies such as Sony, Toyota, and Panasonic have also visited Disco headquarters and received explanations about the company's in-house currency system, Will. However, at the time of writing, no other companies have introduced an in-house currency system like Will.
President Sekiya first proposed the idea of Will to Disco's managerial accounting officer in 2008. At this point, Disco had already introduced Will at the department level, but President Sekiya wanted to introduce it at a company-wide level. However, Disco's managerial accounting officer predicted employee rebellion and was concerned that 'selfish and dishonest people would abuse the system and inequality would spread.' Undaunted, President Sekiya proposed the introduction of Will again three years later, and Will was finally adopted at a company-wide level.
To verify whether Will works, a trial was conducted in the Applications Department, which consists of about 70 engineers who support customer testing of DISCO's cutting and grinding machines. At the time, the head of the Applications Department gave the device his stamp of approval, saying, 'Will will be a success.'
At Disco, for every 1 billion yen in sales, about 400 million Will is usually generated. Salespeople are responsible for distributing this throughout the company. They use Will to pay other employees or to encourage them to do work that supports them. For example, they may pay Will to the manufacturing team to manufacture and sell new machines, distribute Will to the research team as research royalties, or pay Will to the HR department to raise the salaries of employees who perform well.
Employees may also give and receive Will between each other. Whether the reward is paid in advance or after the fact is determined by the optimal method agreed upon by the parties. Will also has a system for allocating tasks in an auction format, and the fewer people who can or want to perform a task, the more Will must be paid. People who are desperate to do a specific job or who want to learn skills from a specific employee may pay Will in exchange for the privilege.
[Corporate CM] Disco's in-house system 'Individual Will' - YouTube
Will is managed by eight employees and has 772 penalty items and 337 reward items, of which only about 187 are used regularly. The purchasing department fines people who send the wrong address on letters or packages, and the PR department fines people when negative articles about the company are published.
Each employee at Disco is assigned an 'existence cost,' and at the beginning of the month, their Will balance is subtracted according to their existence cost. Therefore, employees need to earn Will so that their Will balance is equal to or greater than zero. At Disco, the higher the position, the greater the cost to the company is considered to be, and mid-level and above employees have an hourly existence cost of 10,400 Will, while President Sekiya's is 26,600 Will.
Will accounts for about 40% of employee bonuses and can significantly boost income: In 2023, a 41-year-old employee earned more than 59 million yen thanks to Will, and another employee who manages the Will system cited Will as the reason he joined Disco in the first place.
However, as one employee said, 'I was once fined 10 million Will for a mistake in the file name. At that time, I really hated the Will system. But the next day, I felt it was a message from God telling me that I needed to earn and save more Will,' so it seems that the system is suitable for some people and not others.
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in Note, Posted by logu_ii