Founded in 1926, Takebishi focuses on three main sectors: industrial equipment and systems; semiconductor and devices; and social/information communications. It has developed the ability to provide components from Japanese heavyweights like Mitsubishi and Omron and embed them into total solutions for its customers, essentially acting as the client’s purchasing and design departments. By combining its innovative products with those of Japanese manufacturing giants such as Mitsubishi, Takebishi Corporation is pushing the trading world forward by providing total solutions.
How would you describe Takebishi’s role in Japan’s unique industrial supply chain?
The ‘made in Japan’ term has somewhat disappeared globally, and electronics and semiconductors have declined. However, in terms of factory automation, Japan is still leading the way. Murata Manufacturing, or Kyocera, who started off as a ceramics and porcelain company, are now the world leaders. We provide factory automation machinery from Mitsubishi to them, so we support manufacturing companies to excel in the world and grow together.
In recent decades, we’ve seen the rise of regional manufacturing competitors in other Asian countries, who’ve replicated the monozukuri process, but leveraging a cheaper labour cost. Yet we still see Japanese firms maintaining a large global market share in niche B2B fields. What do you think are some of the competitive advantages of Japanese manufacturers?
The strength of Japanese companies in terms of competitiveness is that they are actively collaborating with other local companies for technological manufacturing, as well as information exchange. Since we are an island nation, Japanese people need to work together in order to maximise the use of resources. We act as the bridge between those companies in connecting their information and knowledge.
Since Kyoto is a tight knit community where companies are highly active in collaborating together, they tend to stay here, whereas companies from Osaka tend to go to Tokyo. In Kyoto’s tradition, when you make a single fan, multiple craftspeople are working at each specific step, and that has evolved into Japanese manufacturing as well; we have different companies collaborating at every step.
The Japanese manufacturing culture is under threat because in the next fifteen years, one in every three people will be over the age of sixty-five. This brings two major repercussions: a labour crisis and a shrinking of the domestic market. What impact is Japan’s demographic decline having on your company?
In Nikkei’s newspaper, there’s demographic research done every year, and the latest one published a few days ago said that compared to five years ago, there’s been a decline in the manufacturing working force by around 2.8 million people.
As a premise, it is a great social issue for Japan that we don’t have enough labour, on the other hand, it is a good business opportunity for Takebishi because we have been focusing on promoting automation. With the declining population, and the trade dispute between China and the US, many Japanese companies are coming back to Japan, where the labour cost is considerably high. Moreover, with COVID-19, avoiding contact between people has become a common practice and automation has been pursued as a result. This has been a positive boost for us.
Traditionally traders in Japan have provided logistics and financing, but now they also have to add value somehow. How do you anticipate the role of the wholesaler or trader in Japan will evolve? What advantages has your history brought to your new solutions?
The role of the trading company has been changing throughout the history of Japan, including ours. Conventionally, traders transported the items from one place to another without adding any value in terms of logistics, and they had an aspect of supplying financials. Now we must add value in order to survive as a trading company. What we do is provide components from Mitsubishi or Omron and embed them into the total solution, so we can act on behalf of our clients’ purchasing department, as well as design department. To do that, we must have a high substantial knowledge in addition to the ability and capability. Takebishi’s corporate philosophy is ‘creating a bright future by connecting people and technology with confidence’; that is one reason for our existence.
In 1998, we developed our own product, "DeviceXPlorer OPC Server", which converts various PLC vendors' specific protocols to Open Platform Communications (OPC), which is a global standard industrial communication interface. This product is now sold in fifty-seven countries, with over 41,000 units being sold. The demand is increasing every year, so the more we sell, it means we’re providing more added value products.
In the trading of materials for factory automation, there seems to be a disconnect between the providing of the product and knowing how to use it. How are you overcoming that challenge?
Our uniqueness is that we provide total embedded solutions or systems; we don’t only sell the device, but we listen to the needs of the customers. We put them all together, so it becomes something that is one of a kind and is easy to use by our customers. That is our strength.
An area in which Japan hasn’t been quite advanced is the integration of digital transformation (DX) technologies, but what impact do you see DX is having on wholesaling in Japan?
We are actively involved in DX. It’s true that Japan is far behind in this matter, and with the size of our company, we can’t cater to big requests, but we’re trying to meet them on a small scale by incorporating DX into every step of the manufacturing process. One example is our "DeviceXPlorer OPC Server", which is an indispensable product for equipment monitoring and production control at manufacturing sites.
How would you describe the role that collaboration plays in your business? Are you currently looking for any new partners?
Collaboration plays a vital role anywhere in the world. By having companies collaborating, you’re able to create new products or maximise the efficiency, and to do that, we are actually the instigator or the middleman for it.
Recently, we acquired a Singaporean trading company called Le Champ; they have their own original product line up. Additionally, in Hong Kong and Vietnam, we deal with a company that handles various products, so by introducing those new items, we can promote the collaboration domestically.
At the same time, we want to take the Japanese products, especially the Mitsubishi ones, to Le Champ, the trader in Singapore, and they could be the key distribution station to Southeast Asian markets in terms of factory automation, DX, and among others.
In the field of factory automation, the products of Mitsubishi and OMRON are representative of ‘Made in Japan’. That’s why the acquisition of Le Champ in Southeast Asia, which will start handling their world-class products, is the synergy we expect the most from.
Your business has three main categories: industrial equipment and systems, semiconductor and devices, social information and communications . Is there a particular business segment that you see having great potential for growth in the future?
The strategy is to have a well-balanced management of 40%, 30% and 30% on different business lines. We also want to emphasise the medical and pharmaceutical field, because with the ageing population, the cancer radiation treatment device would be the next popular product being sold in the market
You have a diverse international profile, being present in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Vietnam. Is there a particular region that you consider key as part of your international expansion strategy?
Our primary focus is on Southeast Asia, especially after acquiring Le Champ, we would like to enlarge their channels entering India, Malaysia, and the Philippines. They don’t deal with any Omron or Mitsubishi products, so we would like to fortify their line-up as well as maybe doing another M&As in the region.
Europe and the U.S. are focusing on promoting the "DeviceXPlorer OPC Server," with the immediate goal of increasing its current 7% market share to 14%.
Regarding China, we are being very careful; we feel that 5G and EVs are too saturated in the Chinese market. Furthermore, there are several political issues, including the trade dispute with the US, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan. With that, many Japanese companies are returning to Japan or moving to Vietnam, so it’s important to see the situation and analyse what we could do there. Thailand and Vietnam are our direct branches, and these areas are important to replace the Chinese manufacturing market. Hence, we would like to fortify our Mitsubishi and Omron line-up in these countries.
What do you foresee as being the biggest obstacle or challenge to achieve these targets you set for yourself in your midterm plan ‘T-Link 1000’, and how will you overcome them?
The highest risk that is ingrained in our business is the restructuring of manufacturers. For example, before Renesas was restructured, we had many transactions with Renesas, but then they decided not to sell to us, a trading company, and all of our transactions were lost. Such a change of policy is a big risk for us, and we try to work with a wide variety of manufacturers to avoid this. In fact, we currently procure from 1,600 companies, and that is how we strive to balance out the risk.
Imagine we come back for your 100th anniversary and have this interview all over again: what would you like to tell us? What goals would you like to have accomplished by then?
That is a bit too far ahead, so I don’t have anything specific in mind. But next year, I would really like to achieve 100 billion Japanese yen turnover. Additionally, this is my personal preference, but I would like to pursue the Wind Power Generation Project. I have a strong passion towards renewable energy because I have previously gained experience in the electric power sector of Takebishi Corporation. We haven’t reached a consensus to do that yet, so there’s a long way to go.
For the 100th anniversary, we have one big direction. Unfortunately, in the automotive industry, we are not able to play a vital role, since there are about forty thousand companies involved in making a single car, and that is in a pyramid shape. Likewise, in the power generation industry, there will be this pyramid structure. As a company, we have already decided that we would like to enter as a supplier or the trader in this wind power generation sector. However, my personal goal is for us to become a power generator ourselves.
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