Fanuc Ltd.

International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 75 (2004) by Douglas Sun, David Salamie

Inaba's goal of increasing Fanuc's robot sales was not simply a business matter, but a reflection of his personal interest in robots. Known in Japan as the Emperor of Robots, Inaba said in 1981 that it was his dream to develop within four years a robot that would help assemble Fanuc's robot-made robot parts into finished robots. By the middle of the decade, Fanuc had indeed developed assembly robots, which were used to put together parts for motors at its motor factory.

Fanuc's success in robotics brought Inaba to the attention of the U.S. financial press. There was his passion for the color yellow, for instance, because, as he put it, "In the Orient, yellow is the emperor's color." Fanuc factories, offices, and assembly lines were all painted in such a shade. The workers' jumpsuits were also yellow, head to toe. Inaba was known for his demanding and authoritarian management style; at meetings, his subordinates were not allowed to speak unless spoken to.

In the mid-1980s, sales of automation equipment dropped substantially. Manufacturers who pumped large amounts of capital into automation equipment suddenly found themselves with weak cash flows and were unwilling to invest further. GM cut back on its commitment to robotics, GMFanuc sales fell, and Fanuc was further hurt by the relative strength of the yen against the dollar, making its products more expensive in the United States. Fanuc, nevertheless, managed to maintain a healthy profit margin despite these difficulties, and it kept expanding its activities.

In 1987 it tightened its grip on the U.S. market by entering into a joint venture with another pillar of U.S. industry, General Electric Company (GE). The two companies formed GE Fanuc Automation to manufacture computerized numerical control (CNC) devices. The deal marked something of a defeat for GE, which had failed in its attempt to become a factory automation powerhouse. GE stopped making its own CNC equipment and turned its Charlottesville, Virginia, plant over to the new company, which equipped it to produce Fanuc CNC devices.

In 1988 Fanuc once again joined forces with General Motors, this time to form GMFanuc Robotics Europa, to market robots in Europe. In 1989 it took advantage of relaxed East-West tensions to increase its presence in the Soviet Union. It joined with Mitsui & Co., Ltd., a huge Japanese trading company and with Stanko Service, a Soviet machine-tool service organization, to form Stanko Fanuc Service, which would maintain and repair Fanuc products there.

Fanuc's success had always stemmed from the perception that its products were the most reliable as well as the least expensive on the market. In a cutting-edge field such as automation, a huge commitment to research and development was required, and fully one-third of Fanuc's nearly 1,800 employees were engaged in such activity in the late 1980s, the highest ratio of any Japanese manufacturer. As with every other facet of the company's operations, Fanuc's R&D bore the personal stamp of Seiuemon Inaba. He once gave his Product Development Laboratory a clock that ran ten times faster than normal, as a gentle reminder of the importance of staying ahead of the competition. Inaba made the German engineering slogan Weniger Teile , which means "fewer parts," Fanuc's slogan; machines with fewer parts are cheaper to produce and easier for automatons to assemble.