And yet, for Canon MJ the consumer goods repair division is a 'cost center.' That is, it does not generate profit. If Canon MJ were to charge users a repair fee with profitability in mind, the cost of the repair would in some cases exceed the price of an all-new product.

The key is to enhance the repair service level without spending an exorbitant amount of money. "In addition to achieving a higher level of customer satisfaction from our services, we pursue efficiencies in the repair process on par with those seen in the production of all-new products," says Aoki.

For this reason, Canon MJ pushed forward with consolidation of its repair centers from the middle half of the 2000s. With changes in products, including greater complexity, repair work has largely transformed from mechanical adjustments in the past to part replacements today, but the main reason for this consolidation was to reduce costs. By centralizing all service centers around a single location, Canon MJ sought to streamline the management of parts used in repair work and cut overhead expenses. Furthermore, the centralization of repair data can also be used to streamline development when it is provided promptly as feedback to product designers.

Canon MJ also launched a uniform fee structure in order to enhance the level of transparency of its repair business. The company made repair fees uniform for each model regardless of the nature of the repair work, whereby eliminating the sense of unfairness seen from mixed repair pricing for the exact same model and enhancing the level of customer satisfaction. This also eliminated time and effort needed to issue a repair cost estimate to the customer.

As it moved forward with this series of reform initiatives, Canon MJ began to see various issues with the Takuhai Mentenansu service. For example, there were many cases where the service did not meet the essential objective of a speedier repair, such as when a customer's schedule did not fit with the next-day pick up schedule. Many users also asked if the product could be picked up the same day when making the request for the repair.

Canon MJ recognized that the customer was likely to be home on the same day as when they made the request for the repair. This was a major reason behind why Canon MJ launched the Haya-Mente service that provides same-day pick up.

To the untrained eye the Haya-Mente service may appear to be the same old Takuhai Mentenansu service with the added option of same-day pick up. Yet, Aoki looks back, "We faced a lot of difficulties in shortening what was already the industry's fastest repair service by a full day." The first difficulty was integrating the information systems of the Canon Group and the Yamato Group. Apparently it took nearly one year of trial and error to integrate the systems and smoothly exchange data, which included the tedious process of matching data from both groups and adding items where needed.