Buying injection-moulding technology from Ankerwerk and building out general industrial machinery (1960)

Technology bought, and technology kept

Injection moulding began as a business built on bought-in technology. That it took root anyway appears to owe to the ten years of accumulation underneath it: the company had developed its own extruder in 1950, and the work of melting resin and giving it shape was already in its hands. What could be bought was only the part that shoots the melt into the mould; the screw, the barrel and the controls it went on to rebuild itself. When it became the first in the industry to ship an all-electric machine in 1987, twenty-seven years had passed since the licence.

That said, this judgement can be called correct only because we also know what happened on the construction-machinery side. As of 1969 the company's national share in construction machinery, at 20%, was higher than the 15% it held in resin machinery; which of the two was the real business had not been settled. The Tokyo works closed in September 1987, and the $335.5M (¥43bn) gain on the sale of the site filled out accounts that were tending to losses. Skill in diversification shows less in what a company takes up than in when it folds the line that did not grow.