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Scientific Collaboration between University and Industry
in Mechanical Manufacturing in Japan

Speaker: Toshio Sata
   Vice President, Toyota Technological Institute

KOSHIBA

 Next Speaker is Professor Toshio Sata, who is now the Vice President of Toyota Technological Institute. He served as a professor of Engineering in the University of Tokyo so many years. And he is one of the key figures in innovation of Japanese industry. He will talk about how things went on. He received many prizes not only from Japan but also from foreign country, for instance, Goerge Shresinger Preize from Germany. Professor Sata, please come and give the talk.

SATA

 Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I am going to talk about how university and industry in Japan have been collaborating in the area of mechanical manufacturing. The Japanese mechanical industry revived from the ruins following the second world war and since then has grown satisfactorily through several different phases. These periods can be classified as the recovery period from 1945 to 1954, rapid domestic economical growth period from 1955 to 1970, export-led growth period from 1971 to 1985 and globalization period from 1985 to 1996. The contributions of the Japanese universities in all of these industrial development phases have been significant in many different ways as follows:

In the following sections, perspectives of collaboration are addressed with the aim of shedding light on the essence of cooperation by examining practical examples.

1. Education of researchers and engineers

 One of the most important roles of a university is to educate innovative researchers and useful engineers. In this sense, Japanese universities have contributed a great deal to our mechanical industry. The first success could be attributed to the great achievements of Dr. Masatoshi Okochi. From 1921 to 1946 he was President of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, called "Riken" in Japanese, as well as being head of a research laboratory at the same institute. It is said that "Riken" is the birthplace of scientific and technological research in Japan. In the 1920's and 30's, Dr. Okochi educated three great manufacturing researchers. Professors Keikichi Ebihara, Makoto Okoshi and Shinji Fukui who were assigned to work in the field of casting, metal cutting and metal forming, respectively. They worked far beyond their tasks and obtained worthy scientific results by analyzing their respective manufacturing processes. After earning their Ph.D. degrees with these works, they were appointed as professors at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo and founded manufacturing laboratories there. Many other graduates of the Okochi laboratory at "Riken" joined various manufacturing companies as chief engineers or manufacturing engineers and contributed a great deal to the growth of their companies. This group has since been named "the Okochi family". The manufacturing family tree initiated by Dr. Okochi is shown in Figure 1.

 The second generation of the Okochi family, especially those working in universities began to educate the next generation of manufacturing researchers and engineers. Professor Okoshi of the University of Tokyo for example, educated more than one hundred manufacturing researchers and engineers including 24 professors working in various universities around the nation.

 I and Professor Yoshikawa, the present President of the University of Tokyo, are of the third generation. I am the fifth youngest and Professor Yoshikawa is the youngest. While working at the University of Tokyo, I educated 27 professors, including 5 foreign professors. Several other manufacturing families were also initiated at then called, Imperial University. When the Ministry of Education took the policy to expand the factory of engineering in the national university to meet the need of our industry in the 1960s, we had enough good faculty members in the field of manufacturing engineering.

 In Japan, the majority of universities have at least one manufacturing laboratory in either the department of mechanical engineering, precision engineering or in the electronic mechanical engineering department. Students in these departments learn aspects of various manufacturing engineering disciplines such as metal cutting and metal forming and other material processing as well as machine tools, CAD and manufacturing systems. Fourth year students work in their laboratory on research subjects that they are required to present along with their graduation thesis. In this period, fourth year student work with graduate students, visiting researchers from industries and abroad and other research associates. This gives them a valuable opportunity to experience and learn engineering research and technology. During this period, close and warm relationships between the professor and students are gradually developed which continue even after their graduation. With this system, we have been successful in providing well-educated graduates to our industry and research institutes.

2. Communication and technical discourse in engineering societies and industrial associations

 In Japan, engineering societies such as the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Japan Society of Precision Engineering as well as industrial associations such as the Japan Association of Automobile Industry have several research committees on various technical subjects as one of their activities. The list of research committees in the field of mechanical and manufacturing of the Japan Society of Precision Engineering is shown in Table 1.

 These committees which usually consist of researchers from universities and public institutes as well as engineers from industry, are mainly chaired by a university professors. Meetings are held every one to three months. The task of these committees is to make a survey of advanced technology in their field, the results of which are then reported to the other members, and steps to be taken in the future are then discussed. A committee may sometimes work cooperatively on a specific subject. This kind of information exchange has contributed to the improvement of productivity and quality of products in the industry as a whole.

 Through these activities, the committee members share the advanced technology in their field and develop close working relationships. Good human relation formed in these committees are helpful in initiating and promoting collaborative work between university and industry in the future.

3. Collaboration as technical advisors

 When companies plan to diversify into new areas of manufacturing, pursue new research projects, prepare workers for new tasks and so on, they invite potential professors in that particular field to give lectures to company researchers and engineers. If the company finds the professor's lecture particularly reliable to the company's area of interest, they ask him to collaborate in the development of their new project by giving technical advice related to the subject. If the company's offer is accepted, the professor will then visit the company and begin his work. When a professor collaborates as a technical advisor, he is entrusted with company secrets. There are no contract agreements or consultancy fees. In return, however, the company donates research funds to the professor's laboratory which helps support and expand research work at his laboratory.

 In Japan, most collaborative work has been successful in producing fruitful results. Companies benefit from the extensive technical advice they receive and professors through cooperation with companies, become familiar with the actual problems encountered on shop floo>