The world is facing a number of increasingly critical and complex issues such as global warming accompanied by more extreme weather events, and Japan’s dwindling workforce amid an aging population. Lifestyles and working styles are also seeing major changes through developments such as the rise of the surveillance state made possible by the growth of ICT, and calls for zero emissions-based environmentally friendly lifestyles.
The Meiden Group is responding by working on integrating energy and information systems to create products and services that can provide technology-based solutions to help solve issues of public concern and improve the safety and security of daily life across the board.
Amid this vision, the R&D Division’s role is to anticipate the coming years and continually generate the technologies and products that will become future Meidensha mainstays. These activities are designed to create the pipeline of new products and services that will let the Company provide new value.

Both existing and new business areas need to be considered when determining which technology areas the Meiden Group should work on to achieve its global vision. Making ongoing QCD (quality, cost and delivery) improvements to existing business areas is an important requirement for enhancing product competitiveness, but new products and business areas also need to be created to ensure the Group’s growth.
Meidensha’s two-pronged management approach combines enhancing the competitiveness of existing business areas with developing new products and business areas. R&D that underpins this approach will be essential for giving the Company the innovation and foresight capabilities needed to adapt to a changing business environment while helping to perfect the type of R&D needed to continually generate new value. The fundamental requirements for this type of R&D will be making ongoing refinements to the underlying technologies behind Meidensha’s products and technologies, while augmenting and expanding the strategic intellectual property activities underlying our business and R&D. Read on to find out more about the R&D Division’s activities and how they affect Meidensha’s business areas.

The R&D Division is dedicated to gaining the innovation and foresight capabilities needed to adapt to today’s changing business environment (global environmental crises and other issues of public concern). It aims to produce R&D results that will let the Company generate new value on an ongoing basis (create new business areas and grow profits).

Creating future earnings streams while ensuring a reliable flow of existing earnings streams is the method the Division uses to achieve these aims. ‘Competing for the present while building for the future’ is the slogan used to describe it. Specifically, the Division is using the two approaches below to provide R&D results that meet or exceed the expectations of stakeholders inside and outside the Company.

1. Ongoing enhancements to product competitiveness in existing business areas

The Division is enhancing the competitiveness of existing business areas by using Meidensha’s business departments to provide fast-tracked development work meeting client expectations.

2. Creating new technologies and products that will become future business mainstays

This goal will be achieved by speeding up the cycle of processes from hypothesis to testing and improvement while providing ongoing training designed to produce an innovative workforce.
R&D environments designed to maximize the potential of an innovative workforce will also be provided.