More than a decade before the beginning of the 21st century, Japan was already making great strides toward transforming itself into an Information Age society.

What exactly is an Information Age society? Well, it is a society in which information has value, information is a marketable product, and people profit from controlling information.

On the other hand, the decline of labor-intensive operations accelerated in all fields of industry. Labor became more expensive, and labor-saving and energy-saving measures became categorical imperatives for the industry.

Traditionally, the Commercial Division was organized as a typical, labor intensive business model. Businessmen would visit clients once, sometimes twice a day, depending on the situation, to conduct business negotiations and deliver goods. The times demanded that this way of doing business be reformed. In the 67th term (1984), the Commercial Division adopted "from labor intensive to labor efficient" as its theme.

Up until then, in addition to doing business, businessmen had also been burdened with many other related tasks. They were multipurpose laborers -- they took the order, made out the bill, picked up the desired product at the warehouse, made the delivery, made out the receipt, collected the payment, and sometimes even participated in inventory management.

Labor efficiency meant that businessmen could concentrate on their primary function. However, this type of reform cannot be realized through idealism alone -- there must be a system to back up businessmen.

The DSP, the new physical distribution system project, commenced in 1980. Under the DSP, inventories at branch offices and business locations were reduced to zero and rapid deliveries were made from giant distribution centers established at key points in each region. Utilization of the DSP made it possible to redistribute a considerable portion of businessmen's labor.

The DSP was a businessman back-up system, but KICS was epoch-making, realizing the 68th term (1985) slogan, "Future-oriented wholesaling". This system also anticipated the Information Age's wholesale industry models.

In KICS, information is the commodity. Goods move according to the movement of information. Nor is movement of goods according to information is the only product -- it is also a business which handles all the information that pharmacies and shops selling pharmaceutical products require. Of course, information cannot just be detached as an independent product. KICS is a system that operates on the cutting edge of the pharmaceuticals business world.

Labor reduction through the use of computers is not the sole purpose of this system. The basic premise of this system is to fundamentally change management and wholesales in pharmacies.

KICS commenced sales in August 1986. In addition to being the first multifunction, in-house software developed in the industry, KICS5000 was moderately priced and compact in design, resulting in greater than predicted popularity. In the future, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical will assemble data on its host machine and build a VAN (KICS VAN) in order to thoroughly differentiate itself from other companies. (From an interview with Yutaka Kobayashi)