Unquenchable thirst for innovation

Nara Machin­ery devel­ops pro­cess­ing equip­ment for the high­ly com­pet­i­tive pow­der indus­try, where the con­stant devel­op­ment of new prod­ucts is a req­ui­site. As “a devel­op­ment-inten­sive com­pa­ny”, Nara works tire­less­ly to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive solu­tions and tech­nol­o­gy to cus­tomers across a wide range of indus­tries. In this inter­view, pres­i­dent & CEO, Yorio­ki Nara, dis­cuss­es the company’s tech­nolo­gies, its unquench­able thirst for inno­va­tion, and how it responds to cus­tomers’ needs in an ever-chang­ing market.

In recent years, we have seen region­al peers copy­ing and repli­cat­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es of Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies at a cheap­er labor cost. You make it your mis­sion to sup­port Monozukuri (Japan­ese crafts­man­ship). How would you define the essence of Japan­ese Monozukuri?

Nara machin­ery was found­ed by my father and has a his­to­ry of more than 90 years. Dur­ing this rich his­to­ry, we have only had two pres­i­dents, mean­ing I am the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion pres­i­dent. With­out a doubt, this is a unique fea­ture of the Japan­ese pri­vate sec­tor. In the Japan­ese cul­ture, it is nor­mal to stay for a life­time in one com­pa­ny and the fact that we don’t change pres­i­dent or employ­ee con­stant­ly allows us to devel­op our know-how and improve every process and prod­uct that we make. More­over, thanks to our tech­nol­o­gy and know-how, we are praised by our cus­tomers world­wide and our suc­cess is also due to them. Look­ing at a glob­al per­spec­tive, for Nara machin­ery it is very chal­leng­ing to suc­ceed in our busi­ness because our mar­ket is very tight and com­pet­i­tive. How­ev­er, as men­tioned above, thanks to our tech­nol­o­gy and qual­i­ty of our prod­uct we are capa­ble of meet­ing our cus­tomers need by offer­ing top class products.

In addi­tion, our mind­set is also dif­fer­ent from many busi­ness­men around the world. Indeed, for most com­pa­nies, their first prin­ci­ple or objec­tive is to make mon­ey, the “mon­ey attracts mon­ey” prin­ci­ple. Where­as, for Japan­ese com­pa­nies, and Nara Marchin­ery is no excep­tion, our prin­ci­ple is dif­fer­ent from this per­spec­tive. We focus on cre­at­ing a prod­uct or pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty ser­vice: this is the true essence of Monozukuri or “The art of mak­ing”. Obvi­ous­ly, we want to make mon­ey and prof­it, but we per­son­al­ly think that by putting all our focus in our prod­ucts, pro­duc­tion process and tech­nol­o­gy, it will attract mon­ey alone.

Fur­ther­more, at Nara machin­ery, we get much more excit­ed by upcom­ing chal­lenges than by short-term prof­it. Our indus­try is the pow­der indus­try and I could say that every year we are fac­ing new chal­lenges and new dif­fi­cul­ties. In our com­pa­ny, find­ing the answer to these chal­lenges moti­vates us more than mon­ey. Final­ly, if we are able to find the answer to these chal­lenges, it will unde­ni­ably attract mon­ey and we will there­fore increase our prof­it. To sum­ma­rize my answer to your ques­tion, I believe that what makes monozukuri and there­fore Nara machin­ery spe­cial is: “qual­i­ty attracts money”.

At the eve of the 4th Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, we are see­ing a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of new inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies such as the rise of IoT, AI that are affect­ing the pro­duc­tion process but also the end prod­uct. As a man­u­fac­tur­er com­pa­ny, com­par­ing to before, how are all these changes affect­ing your business?

Even though Nara machin­ery itself doesn’t use tech­nolo­gies such as AI, we have seen that these new tech­nolo­gies have brought to almost every indus­try and new busi­ness method. How­ev­er, as I men­tioned ear­li­er, we don’t use tech­nolo­gies such as AI because in the pow­der han­dling busi­ness, it doesn’t require it. Nev­er­the­less, we have to adapt to what our cus­tomer needs, because at the end of the day, they are the one that bring us new ideas. From that point of view, Nara works tire­less­ly to pro­vide them inno­v­a­tive solu­tion to cre­ate some­thing new.

More­over, what’s fas­ci­nat­ing regard­ing the pow­der busi­ness is that you can cre­ate almost any­thing that you want thanks to the flex­i­bil­i­ty the pow­der mate­r­i­al itself, just by chang­ing the par­ti­cles inside the pow­der, we can pro­duce a new prod­uct, there­fore cre­at­ing new chal­lenges and keep­ing us motivated.

In addi­tion, in the pow­der busi­ness, it is all about the size of the par­ti­cles. Nowa­days, the new trends are the “nano par­ti­cles”, and we at Nara, are think­ing ahead to find what will be the upcom­ing trends regard­ing the “nano par­ti­cles”. This allows us to always be ahead and pre­pared to meet our cus­tomers’ needs in order to pro­vide them with prod­ucts that are prof­itable for both. In fact, this is our phi­los­o­phy, we dream to cre­ate, we fol­low our dream to cre­ate new prod­ucts and this is unde­ni­ably our com­pet­i­tive advantage.

Today, Nara Machin­ery is a man­u­fac­tur­er of pow­der pro­cess­ing equip­ment used in many indus­tries such as petro­chem­i­cals, chem­i­cals, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ener­gy and food. Could you give our read­ers an overview of the dif­fer­ent seg­ments you are in? And are you look­ing to expand in one par­tic­u­lar sec­tor in the future?

We have numer­ous amounts of prod­ucts used in dif­fer­ent indus­tries. There­fore, we can­not focus on one in par­tic­u­lar because we would be los­ing busi­ness. In regards to the prod­uct that holds the largest shares of our sales, we could say that these are the cus­tom-made orders. Each year, our cus­tomers are fac­ing new trends and it is our job to meet them in order to keep grow­ing. In that sense, clients from all around the world approach us with very spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of what they need: whether it’s the char­ac­ter of the pow­der, the appli­ca­tion it will be used for or even the shape.

To con­clude, it is impos­si­ble to name the prod­uct that holds the major share of sales at Nara, for the sim­ple rea­son that with pow­der we can cre­ate any­thing. Thanks to our diver­si­fied cus­tomer base, we have been able to diver­si­fy our prod­uct port­fo­lio, and adapt to high-tech­no­log­i­cal fields such as elec­tron­ics, fine ceram­ics and biotech­nol­o­gy; the con­stant devel­op­ment of new mate­ri­als is manda­to­ry in our industry.

You men­tioned that are many com­pa­nies in this indus­try, what makes Nara machin­ery so spe­cial? Is it your 102 patents, your unique Hybridiza­tion Sys­tem or is it the fact that you work hand in hand with your customers?

Nara machin­ery has always been a “devel­op­ment-inten­sive com­pa­ny” as we focus on devel­op­ing new tech­nolo­gies in order to sup­ply a wide range of indus­tries pow­der pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy and equipment.

Today, our cus­tomers’ needs regard­ing pow­der pro­cess­ing have become more sophis­ti­cat­ed. Some cus­tomers request pow­der cre­at­ed through super-fine par­ti­cle tech­nol­o­gy, break­ing sub­stance into mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el, or pow­der with new func­tions cre­at­ed through mechanochem­i­cal reactions.

The his­to­ry of our tech­nolo­gies fol­lows three main types of equip­ment: the crush­er and mills capa­ble of pul­ver­iz­ing any kind of mate­r­i­al, sec­ond was the pad­dle dry­er which is a heat trans­mis­sion dry­er machine that process­es organ­ic and inor­gan­ic gran­u­lar and pow­dery mate­r­i­al. Third­ly, our unique Hybridiza­tion Sys­tem which is our lat­est tech­nolo­gies designed to phys­i­cal­ly pro­duce new func­tion­al com­pos­ite pow­der mate­r­i­al by dry-method embed­ding fine pow­der onto the sur­face of core pow­der with excel­lent dispersibility.

More­over, dur­ing our more than 90-year his­to­ry, one of the major indus­tries that are using our Jiyu mill equip­ment (which is our first equip­ment of our his­to­ry) or any of our mills equip­ment is the agri­cul­ture and the food indus­try with the milling of fer­til­iz­er, pes­ti­cides for example.

Regard­ing the pad­dle dry­er equip­ment, the major indus­tries that play an impor­tant role for Nara machin­ery is the chem­i­cals indus­try and espe­cial­ly the petro­chem­i­cals indus­try. More­over, Nara is focussing on the bio­mass indus­try, as we believe it will replace the oil indus­try and there­fore rep­re­sents the future.

Final­ly, our unique hybridiza­tion sys­tem is used most­ly in the Elec­tric Vehi­cles which has replaced the bat­tery industry.

Last year you hit 5.7 bil­lion Japan­ese yen in sales, what is your mid-term strat­e­gy to con­tin­ue that cor­po­rate growth?

The sales amount is not our main focus, but we focus on “what’s next?”, or in order words what new tech­nolo­gies we can imple­ment. Indeed, we are con­stant­ly engaged in the research and devel­op­ment of soft­ware and hard­ware able to responds to our customer’s needs. With­out a doubt, here at NARA, we make any­thing possible.

Through­out the years, your com­pa­ny has expand­ed beyond the Japan­ese bor­der. Today, Nara Machin­ery has a phys­i­cal pres­ence in Europe in Ger­many and has an affil­i­at­ed com­pa­ny in South Korea, and part­ner­ships in the UK and Ger­many, as well as licens­es in the USA and India. Can you tell us more about your inter­na­tion­al strat­e­gy?

My dream is to cap­ture more inter­na­tion­al expo­sure, we want to enter new mar­kets and intro­duce NARA’s new tech­nolo­gies to the world.

Addi­tion­al­ly, anoth­er dream that we have, is to increase for­eign employ­ees at Nara Machin­ery to 50%. Indeed, today for­eign employ­ees at NARA rep­re­sent 15% of total employ­ees and we would like to go from 15% to 50% in the next 10 years.