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Niigata Quake Shakes Things Up at Piston Ring Maker Riken

by BBelew57 on July 28th, 2007

Riken Corp has a 50% market share of piston ring production in Japan. The company also has about a 70% market share of seal rings.

When the earthquake hit Kashiwazaki, home of Riken, Japan's 12 automakers saw the plants paralyzed…including Toyota Motor Co, and Nissan Motor Co.

Even Toyota cars are no good with out piston rings and seals.

As a result of the quake, Riken Corp plans to decentralize production…a bit too late for the 40,000+ cars that Toyota will fall

behind on…but…better late than never.

Riken will transfer technology and know-how to Michigan in the United States and Wuhan in China. New production lines will also be set up at these sites.

Additionally, Riken is thinking a plan to use European bases.

The world's largest piston ring maker, Mahle GmbH of Germany, does their work there and Riken and Mahle forged a partnership in June of this year.

Riken also plans to add an all-purpose line at another plant in Japan as well as build warehouses with one-two weeks worth of piston ring inventories.

What a novel idea….a stock pile of parts in a warehouse instead of Japan's just-in-time parts delivery.

The quake really did shake things up in Japan, eh?

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POSTED IN: Doing Business in Japan