Message from the President October.2023

During the period of high economic growth in Japan, there was an environment in which the goods produced would sell, partly reflecting a shortage of goods. However, we have entered an age where the high-quality goods that are produced are not necessarily selling in a world inundated with goods. People's desires for sophisticated (high value added) products with multiple functions have become weaker than in the past due to the diversification of people's values, ways of life and workstyles. This has resulted in an increase in the number of people who feel that they do not need goods other than the goods that they truly need.

Moreover, there is a shift in demand from the consumption of goods, based on a sense of the value of owning goods, to the consumption of intangible things, based on the sense of the value of experiences gained from purchasing these goods and services. Furthermore, it has become important for both companies and consumers to select recyclable products and use renewable energy toward the realization of a sustainable society.

As the consumption behaviors of society change dizzyingly, we must enhance our sensitivity to information regarding the demand generated by corporate customers, to whom we provide goods and intangibles, and demonstrate our ability to propose new value based on technology.

The internal newsletter SYORYU published in October 2023 features the article, "For Realizing Clients' Sozo." The article introduces engineers who are seeking to create (sozo in Japanese) new value based on composite concepts and technological capabilities in response to the changing and evolving initiatives of clients for the resolution of social issues. Moreover, the article also features examples of other companies implementing challenging work addressing social issues and providing new value. I would like to see our employees learn from their strong sense of mission and ability to act.

Reading the words of the employees of the other companies and our engineers in the internal newsletter, I felt that they uniformly reached beyond their own field of specialization. They share ideas on the necessity of multiple technical skills, believing that it is necessary to have a broad perspective and leverage multiple perspectives, in addition to having expertise in specific areas, that they have to accumulate knowledge without being constrained by a particular field, that they have to test the utilization of knowledge in other fields and that the combination of technologies from various fields will likely lead to new things. I have been telling employees to be people with T-shaped skills. Acting toward that aim is the challenge that needs to be overcome to realize clients’ need for creation, and this will lead to self-growth making yourselves unique beyond comparison.

To provide optimal solutions that fulfill the needs of clients, let's leverage our sensitivity to new information and our multidisciplinary technical skills to create.