Daihen has put together its mid-term management plan ending in 2017 called “Daihen Value 2017,” targeting sales on a consolidated basis of over JPY150 billion, with an operating margin of over 8%, and a ROE of over 10%.

As Daihen heads toward its centennial anniversary in 2019, it has established the 2012-2014 period as Phase I, 2015–2017 as Phase II, and 2018-2020 as Phase III. During Phase I the company put effort into the creation of new original products, with sales of these products having expanded to JPY19 billion. Sales for 2014 on a consolidated basis totaled JPY122 billion, exceeding the targeted figure of JPY110 billion and reaching the operating and ROE targets.

In the midst of the current Phase II, the company is further upgrading its new products, and is tackling the inclusion of the world’s first or industry first functions into its products. Accordingly it is targeting sales of JPY40 billion for these. To come up with the expenses for development, to reduce unnecessary spending, the company is promoting automation in its manufacturing department as well as external manufacturing. It is promoting activities aiming at reducing simple work hours by half. By promoting activities which will reduce unnecessary expenses, the company is aiming at expanding this reduction so that it should amount to JPY9 billion and will apply this as an asset for development of new products. As a specific example of activity to reduce expenses, as already reported, the company is moving along with the automation of its production line at its Rokko plant, which is a center for the manufacture of robots in Japan, raising the number of units produced from the previous 7,000 units a year to 10,000 units.

Daihen is also putting effort into market development so as inform the users in a broad way regarding products under development. At the end of May of this year the Rokko FA Center will be called the Rokko Technical Center after being refurbished. A new technical center will be opened at the OTC Shanghai too. Tetsuya Tajiri, president of Daihen said, “We’ll be expanding the functions of the application laboratories at all of our technical centers.” He also mentioned that, ”We’ll be our overall ability to cope with the requirements for manufacturing automation on the part of our users.” The company has revealed that it plans to construct a large scale technical center in Munich, Germany this autumn.