To remain a leading player in the ever-intensifying globally competitive automobile industry, we must return to the basics of manufacturing while maintaining our pursuit of state-of-the-art technologies. This will allow us to respond and adapt with flexibility and swiftness to changing demands.

To this end, we need people with practical skills and knowledge who can pass on the expertise accumulated over the course of a career to the next generation. It will be the development of such human capital that will enable the Company to achieve real and solid expansion, as opposed to a hollow-type of expansion concerned only with scale. This is the attitude, I believe, that will lead to the long-term success of KIKUCHI, as well as the Japanese manufacturing industry as a whole. Developing the capacity to meet constantly changing needs while also maintaining steady production—in other words achieving a balance between change and stability—is one of our most pressing issues, but I believe that this is also an area in which we can develop a competitive advantage over our competitors by drawing on our breadth and depth of experience and expertise built up over many years.

As we continue to work hard to meet the expectations of our customers by a global implementation of a true market-driven approach, we appreciate your continued support.