The step allows a more integrated customer service, generating further synergies and uniting the offering under one single brand name. In future, the new business units ‘Robotics’ and ‘Drives and Motion’ will operate under the roof of YASKAWA Europe, offering customers of both segments integrated solutions. Only very few competitors in the global market will be able to match the scope of YASKAWA’s one-stop product portfolio of electric drives and industrial robots.
Being closer to the customer:
Through this merger, YASKAWA in Europe now employs a staff of 900 offering a very broad portfolio and comprehensive local services via subsidiaries in fourteen countries. As a Japanese engineering company YASKAWA realised early on, it is important to be close to European customers. To streamline transport logistics YASKAWA has set up European production sites for servos, inverters, and system solutions with industrial robots. Local development departments and the European Technical Centre (EUTC) support the effort by offering a strong global network to customise solutions for the needs of the European market. In Japan, the Drive and Motion technology, and MOTOMAN robots have always operated under a joint company roof of YASKAWA. After the merger of the business units in Europe (and simultaneously in the USA) the YASKAWA organisation is now consistent all over the world.
Global No. 1:
Every year, YASKAWA manufactures 1.6 million inverters, 800,000 servos and 22,000 industrial robots. This makes the company the global No.1 supplier of inverters, servos and industrial robots, offering a broad range of ‘know-how’. Clearly the YASKAWA servo drives are used in the company’s branded industrial robots ‘MOTOMAN’. The in-house robots used in manufacture enhance the performance of YASKAWA inverters which are renowned worldwide for their reliability.
Global innovation leadership:
YASKAWA has been known for decades as implementer of visionary ideas that become state-of-the-art technology in later years. The word ‘mechatronics’ for example, was first used by YASKAWA to describe the core technology of product development. Today it is the standard approach to all modern automation.
The list of innovations made by YASKAWA also includes the 3-level inverter, the matrix converter, the dual-arm robot, and the 7-axes robot. A recent addition to the list is the service robot ‘SmartPal’, this mature robot generation offers solutions for the future challenges of an aging population.
Outlook:
In 2012 the YASKAWA business plans envisage a sales volume of 400 million Euros, a staff of 1,000 employees, a market share of 10% for inverters and 15% for robots. Today the joint staff of the two business units in Europe generates an annual sales volume of 250 million Euros. Founded in 1915, the parent company YASKAWA Electric Corporation presently employs a global staff of 8,000 employees and generates annual sales of more than 2.5 billion Euros.
Micromech-Yaskawa supplies world-leading inverters, servo drive technology and linear products. Micromech is the UK distributor and integrator for Yaskawa Electric.
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