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JTEKT

Home / Posts Tagged "JTEKT"

Tag: JTEKT

Top 30 Japanese employers in France -reflecting France’s traditional strengths

Le quatorze juillet seems a good moment to announce our new Top 30 Japanese companies in France.

The total number of employees covered by the 30 largest Japanese employers in France is 35,000 – lower than the totals employed by the Top 30 in Germany (56,000) and the UK (80,000) but the automotive sector is still dominant with nearly half of the Top 30 being automotive or having some automotive business.  Obviously some of the larger employee groups are related to manufacturing workforces – Toyota, JTEKT and NTN for example.

M&A’s have played a part too – NTN, a bearings company, acquired French company SNR Roulements (which was part of the Renault group) in 2006.  Toyota Tsusho acquired CFAO in 2012 – a trading company with over 10,000 employees in Africa.  Fast Retailing added French brands Princesse Tam Tam and Comptoir des Cotonniers to its retail group alongside Uniqlo.

As you might expect, food and drink companies also feature – Nippon Suisan acquired Cite Marine, and Suntory has its Orangina Schweppes brands based out of France. Ajinomoto is also headquartered in France for the region.

The other key sector is technology, particularly imaging – Canon, Ricoh,Toshiba, Konica Minolta, Olympus and Fujifilm.  Once again, each country’s historical comparative advantage is clear (cars, food, films for France, engineering for Germany and cars, finance and other services for the UK) showing how trade and integrated markets encourage specialisation.

Rank Company France employees 2016
1 Toyota 3,475
2 Ricoh 3,335
3 JTEKT 3,212
4 NTN 4,200
5 Fast Retailing 2,300
6 Canon 2,077
7 Toshiba 1715
8 Konica Minolta 1,250
9 Bridgestone 1,036
10 Horiba 971
11 Nippon Suisan 911
12 Suntory 900
13 Sanden 850
14 Nissan 800
15 Toyota Tsusho 653
16 Ajinomoto 600
17 Yamaha Motor 571
18 U-Shin 553
19 Fujifilm 550
20 Asahi Glass 550
21 Shiseido 550
22 Amada 519
23 Dentsu 485
24 Toray 456
25 Fujitsu 450
26 Olympus 450
27 Otsuka Pharma 449
28 Toyota Boshoku 440
29 Kubota 353
30 NTT 350
TOTAL 35,011

 

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Toyota Group dominates Top 30 Japanese employers in Europe, Middle East & Africa

We’ve revised our Top 30 Japanese employers in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) again, this time to include Toyota Tsusho (in at #12) and Toyota Boshoku (in at #29), bumping NYK and Suntory out of the rankings.

The 30 biggest Japanese employers in EMEA now represent over 460,000 employees, around 12% of their total global employment.  EMEA employee totals have increased more than the global totals, at around 6% from 2014/5 to 2015/6 compared to <0.5% worldwide, showing that the region is still growing for Japanese companies.  As you might expect, the total employment in Japan is shrinking, by about 2% year on year.

Adding Toyota Tsusho and Toyota Boshoku made me appreciate once again how important the car industry continues to be worldwide as a source of employment and also how dominant the Toyota Group is.  5 out of the Top 30 are Toyota Group companies (JTEKT and Denso as well as Toyota Tsusho, Toyota Boshoku and Toyota Motor).  A further 4 are purely automotive (Yazaki, Nissan, Bridgestone, Honda) and 6 have automotive related companies in their group (Sumitomo Electric Industries, Hitachi, Asahi Glass, NSG, Panasonic and Toshiba).

Toyota Tsusho is not entirely focused on cars however.  It is a general trading company, and is particularly strong in Africa, since it acquired the French company CFAO in 2012.  CFAO has an automotive sales network but that is only part of its business.  Toyota Boshoku makes automotive components such as seating, door trims and air filters.

Similarly, 8 out of the Top 30 Japanese employers in the UK are automotive and a further 2 have automotive related businesses in the group.  Our revised Top 30 now included Sumitomo Rubber, who have not only acquired the global rights to the Dunlop brand but also bought a UK tyre distributor Micheldever earlier this year.

If you would like more customised reports on the Top 30 Japanese employers in Europe, Middle East & Africa (showing trends in total global employees, Japan based employees, EMEA based employees) and the Top 30 Japanese employers in the UK (showing trends in total UK employees, regional HQ location, region covered, percentage UK of Europe and of global) please contact pernilledotrudlinatrudlinconsultingdotcom

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Toyota learns from JTEKT merger to reorganise for the Internet of Things

With driverless cars and the Internet of Things (IoT), the pressure is on JTEKT, a key member of the Toyota group, to find ways of using its combined strengths in the future, says Nikkei Business (JPNS $).

JTEKT’s main product lines are machine tools, steering systems and bearings, with revenues of around ¥1.3 trn ($9bn).  It continues to use the Toyoda and Koyo brand names since the merger of the two companies in 2006, as well as the JTEKT brand, which has led to concerns that it is not clear what the company stands for and “we have not produced any synergies despite the merger”, according to one senior executive.

One area that may be fruitful is Steer By Wire (SBW).  JTEKT are also trialling IoT technology in their own production lines in Japan with a view to understanding its capabilities better.  JTEKT’s IoT technology is already being used by two parts manufacturers and JTEKT is planning to go beyond just selling its technology and into consulting, particularly for medium sized enterprises with a few hundred employees.

However JTEKT is prevented from selling its technology that has been used in Toyota’s production lines, as part of the strategy of strengthening the Toyota group in 2009.

When the German government announced Industry 4.0 in 2013, many JTEKT engineers felt “we’re already doing that” as Toyota’s factories were already hooked up to the internet.  This is the kind of know how they would like to sell as part of a consulting offering.

“If we don’t do this, we cannot develop overseas employees, or employees that we do develop, will leave”

Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors are sometimes referred to as the 10 million club as they each manufacture over 10,000,000 cars a year.  Tetsuo Agata, President of JTEKT, instead refers to a 20 million club, whereby Toyota’s main suppliers supply parts for over 20,000,000 cars a year.

Agata moved from Toyota Motors to Toyoda Automotive and then to JTEKT in 2013 and has been focusing on weaving a matrix system of vertical businesses and horizontal functions.  A global HR system has been introduced.  JTEKT has 44,000 employees, 27,000 of whom are overseas.  The key positions in each operation have been made more defined and transparent and regions have been consolidated.  The next step is to build a global remuneration and evaluation system.  “If we don’t do this, we cannot develop overseas employees or employees that we do develop will leave.”

“I was so shocked how little had been invested in systems development that I nearly fell off my chair”

Agata also looked through each division’s strategies during his first summer holiday and was “frankly, surprised that they were working so well”.  He immediately started a training programme on “PDCA” (Plan, Do, Check, Act).  He also invested in systems and a reform of work processes in the functional divisions.  “I was so shocked how little had been invested in systems development I nearly fell off my chair” he says.

Another horizontal initiative is the “Internet of Everything” – connecting people as well things.  He has brought in external resources to work out how to monetize this “soft business” and thinks it will be ready for launch in about a year. “These horizontal threads are things I have to put in.  It can’t just be a structural solution, it has to be the culture as well”

The Toyota group is embarking on a second restructuring since 2014, reorganising its transmission, seat and brake businesses.   JTEKT has taken 10 years to show synergies since it was formed from the merger and Toyota is using the lessons from this to find hints for how to reform the group for the future.

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Last updated by Pernille Rudlin at 2018-10-08.

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