Message from the President May.2018

At the Employees Award Ceremony for fiscal 2018, which will be held in four areas from May 19, we will honor nine engineers for their accomplishment of 40 years of service at MEITEC, in what is a first for the Company. This group of nine has achieved and embodied the work style of ““lifetime professional engineers”®” of MEITEC, and I am very proud and grateful to them for their contributions and achievements over so many years.

Under the mandatory retirement system at Japanese companies, a mandatory retirement age of 60 was regarded as something companies needed to strive to introduce, following the amendment to the Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons in 1986. Mandatory retirement below the age of 60 was prohibited in the 1994 amendment (enforced in 1998). This marked the beginning of the mandatory retirement age of 60.

Since then, the mandatory retirement age of 60 has become the mainstream at many Japanese companies, and it was common practice for an employee to work for a single company for 38 years, assuming the employee joined the company after graduating from university and retired at 60. As such, employees with 40 years or more of service were probably quite rare.

Subsequently, with the revision to the Act in 2012, employment until the age of 65 became mandatory, in principle, for all employees who wished to continue working to that age. As such, the employment environment has improved so that now employees will be able to work until the age of 65 at any company.

At MEITEC, employees are able to continue working as professionals who provide “market value” by which they are able to meet customer needs even if they are over 60. This year is a milestone, as it is the year in which engineers who have worked for 40 years are recognized for the first time. The fact that the number of these employees will continue to rise is a valuable asset for MEITEC. This is because working for 40 years at MEITEC means that the employee has been playing an active role across the design and development departments in many customer companies in the manufacturing industry, instead of simply working for a single company. It also means that the employee has been able to achieve a professional work style in which he/she can continue working for 40 years in a single occupation of “engineer.” I think of the track record of working for 40 years at MEITEC as appearing similar to, but actually being different from, working for some other company, so that you should also be proud of being an employee of MEITEC.

Incidentally, the employee and president meeting, which will be held at all facilities for about six months, will begin in May at Mito EC (May 16). Because I want to create more opportunities for interactive exchanges with our employees in fiscal 2018, I plan to increase the number of employee and president meeting to 50 in total.

The Group Mid-Term Management Plan “Next Stage 1” (2017-2019) will enter its second year, and it is an important period for all employees to work on the plan to achieve the targets.

I would like you to participate in the employee and president meeting and make it a place for many insights. I look forward to seeing you there.