Message from the President Oct.2013

In the “Ideal State” of Meitec, we defined the value to the customers as “To be a reliable strategic partner for Japanese manufacturers who are undergoing major changes.” But how the customers are willing to make this major changes would be an important issue we have to carefully consider in preparing our management plan starting from next fiscal year.

When we were preparing our current Mid-term Management Plan three years ago, our customers were making major changes triggered by the Lehman Shock. And now, I believe that Meitec need to recognize that such changes are further accelerating and changing.

For example, change in terms of “selection and concentration” in our customer’s management strategy have become further clearer now. It was even said before the Lehman Shock that weak point of Japanese-manufactures were that they can not breakaway form side-by-side strategy with others. That is, for instance, if a competitor produce new product like LCD TV, one also must produce the same.
But now, in order to compete in the world market, strategy of concentrating assets to fields where one has advantages on and shrinking or withdrawal from weaker fields are boldly carried out mainly by the electrical and machinery industry.
By these changes, there might be possibilities of reducing absolute volume of design and development work domestically. How could this affect the temporary engineer staffing market?

Or, after the Lehman Shock, localization of R&D is accelerating in customer’s global strategies. But on the other hand, there are movements of thoroughly pursuing domestic development utilizing advantages within Japan such as superior human resources and cooperation with rich suppliers. In that case, what customer’s are trying to keep with in Japan?

Also in customer’s human resource strategies, especially in engineer strategies, it is now usual to move and assign engineers across the different divisions instead of keeping the move within one division like they use to. This may eventually result in expanding engineer’s career similar to the career path of Meitec engineers.

In order for Meitec to stay “reliable strategic partner” for these customer who are going through major changes with strong willingness and taking various risks, I believe that important subject for our next management plan would be to think how we need make changes and carry out such changes.