Japan’s Powder Metallurgy SMEs
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Diversity, sustainability, efficiency: How two of Japan’s Powder Metallurgy SMEs are thriving in a challenging landscape Whilst many of Japan’s major multinational PM companies are recognised globally, Japan’s domestic Powder Metallurgy industry is in large part driven by SMEs. In this article, international PM consultant Dr Yoshinobu Takeda details the steady growth of two of Japan’s most successful PM SMEs, NAPAC and Nihon Kizai, as a blueprint for what can be achieved by smaller actors by leveraging a diverse product portfolio, an ethos of sustainability, and an efficient production mindset.
According to the Small and Mediumsized Enterprise Agency (SMEA) Japan, a manufacturing SME is “any entity which is a company whose capital or total amount of investment does not exceed three hundred million yen, or a company or an individual whose regular workforce does not exceed three hundred persons.” An SMEA report states that 48% of added value in the Japanese economy as a whole is from SMEs, and in the metal products manufacturing industry, 81% of it is from SMEs, demonstrating the important role SMEs play in this field. Government statistics show that there are seventy Powder Metallurgy companies currently operating in Japan with over thirty employees, although the reports do not specify the details of SMEs in the sector. These statistics present the structure of the Japanese PM industry as follows: of these seventy companies, thirteen produce more than 1,000 tons per year as major PM component manufacturers, according to
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this author’s analysis, while OEMs with in-house PM production and Tier 1 companies primarily produce a limited volume of parts. Some subsidiaries of non-automotive companies also produce limited
volumes of PM components, as do some independent SMEs. Among the most productive independent SMEs, fewer than ten companies produce more than 100 tons of PM parts per year. The
Fig. 1 Loading green parts into a vacuum sintering furnace at Nihon Kizai, Japan (Courtesy Nihon Kizai, Co., Ltd.)
Autumn/Fall 2021
Powder Metallurgy Review
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