Message from the President April.2020

April 2020 marks the start of our new three-year Meitec Group Mid-Term Management Plan (2020-2022): “The Transformation.”

The name of this new plan means precisely what it says: transformation. Going forward, we will aim to become a unique presence in the industry by identifying trends and changes in society and transforming our Group business model to match those changes; contributing value to society with our manpower and technologies through our business operations by continuing to supply high added value to our customers in the manufacturing industry, and to the world’s engineers. Doing so will require all employees to come together and unite in making this transformation.

The transformation that I would like all of you to make has four key elements.

1. Change your mindset
(i.e. change your way of thinking)
2. Stop setting limits for yourself
3. Act in order to make a change
4. Be particular about results

In other words, what this essentially means is that all employees should pursue, polish and refine their skills and abilities to the highest level expected by society, without being constrained by past experiences or prejudices, and seek to contribute to creating a more prosperous future by providing those skills and abilities to the manufacturing industry.

The world is already shifting at blistering speed, towards technological progress and environmental changes. In order for us to keep up and overtake this speed, the Group must immediately unite and make this transformation to a new business model, working in pursuit of higher added value.

The Spring edition of our internal newsletter SYORYU (April 2020)—the first to be issued in FY2020—also deals with various “transformations” based on predictions of the future up until 2030, from both internal and external perspectives. One part of the issue that interested me in particular was the interview with Mr. Hiroshi Asakura, a research fellow of NIKKEI BP INTELLIGENCE GROUP’s Mirai Institute (meaning “Future Institute”). In the article, Mr. Asakura comments that, “the key blueprint for the engineers of the future is that of human resources who can envisage the future, and then consider their current position and the direction in which they should proceed in order to achieve that vision by backcasting.” I think that engineers who are capable of backcasting (conceiving a vision for the future and then planning based on that) will not only be able to identify currently obvious needs, but also have the imaginative power to envisage future social issues, and the technical capabilities to find solutions to those issues.

I would very much like all employees to read this article, and for people who until now have been considering things on an extrapolation from the current situation to take this opportunity to try changing the way they think. This is another important “transformation.”