YANMAR Technical Review

Abstract

Yanmar Holdings held its 2nd Yanmar Technical Symposium 2015 (Ytec 2015) to recognize the achievements of its excellent engineers during 2014, to share R&D strategy, to facilitate networking, and to expose participants to new ways of thinking.

1. Technical Symposium for Yanmar Engineers

For two days from this past October 1st and 2nd , Yanmar held its Yanmar Technical Symposium 2015, “Ytec,” at the Kobe Portopia Hotel.

The aim of this engineers’ symposium, which was held for the first time last year, is to “concentrate knowledge” through technical and views exchanges which overcome group barriers between engineers from all business entities of the Yanmar Group.

Bringing together 104 people in total, including 61 engineers chosen from among Yanmar’s business divisions and business companies including overseas 7 research and development division , the symposium provided a forum for discussion of future directions for technology strategy; for presenting excellent inventions, technical papers, in-house standards, and so on for FY2014; and for giving participants a chance to experience new efforts through workshops, etc. on “Design Thinking”, awareness for innovation, and so on.

2. Excellent Technology: Presentation on “Good-Tec”

The symposium included 24 presentations on “Good-Tec (Good Technology)”. These represent specially excellent technology for FY2014, selected from four divisions: Inventions, Technical Papers, YIS-YGL, and Poster Discussions.

The symposium also included a program of lively discussions, with easy to understand presentations on technical paper and small-group discussions held on 2nd day for YIS-YGL and Poster Discussion divisions.

3. Discussion of Future Directions for Technology Strategy

On the first day, Makoto Yuri, General Manager of the R&D Management Division of Yanmar gave a presentation on the technology strategy of the Yanmar Group, including three R&D strategies whereby Yanmar is seeking to expand the scope of its business to become a global corporation:

1. Business expansion
2. Maintain industry leadership and expand market share
3. New business

This was accompanied by discussion of the importance of utilization ofopen innovation and ways of improving development efficiency.

4. Lectures on Developing Innovative Human Treasure and on Open Innovation

On the second day, Sadao Hirose, a Director of Yanmar Holdings Co., Ltd. gave a lecture on developing innovative human treasure, explaining how innovation is essential to the continuing progress of the business, and the importance of developing human treasure with such capabilities. Also, Mr. Suwa from NineSigma Japan, Inc. presented examples of open innovation challenges and described the importance of combining not only on in-house technologies, but also incorporating technologies and ideas from other sources, such as companies or universities, leading to innovative business models or product development.

5. Workshop on Design Thinking

A new effort at this symposium was the holding of a workshop on design thinking. “Design thinking” is a way of going about product development that is inspired by human or real things, as opposed to past approaches inspired by the market or technology, and it has attracted interest as a methodology with the potential to deliver value to customers in entirely new ways through the use of completely new ideas to overcome challenges. Associate professor Mr.Suzuki from the Kyoto Institute of Technology, an expert in this field, was invited to serve as facilitator at the workshop. The participants divided into 15 four-person teams to engage in activities including lectures, ideas, concept development, prototyping, and presentation ,etc. over a short period of time. This workshop became an intensive one.

Despite some puzzlement among the participants, it provided an opportunity for participants to enjoy applying new approaches that work differently from past way of thinking. Hopefully, the experience will prove useful in their future product development work.

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The original technical report is written in Japanese.

This document was translated by R&D Management Division.