Developing the NXT modular placement machine (2003)

What it replaced was its own success

What made this decision hard is that the machine being replaced was not a failure but a success that had carried the company for more than a decade. The CP series had taken the world on speed, and that success left an expectation inside the company that it would come back. As President Ohara Masayoshi said, no alternative plan had been prepared, and there was ample room for the objections and the harsh judgements to have carried the day. That what pushed back was not a management argument but the enthusiasm of young engineers — as the company’s own history records — says something about how decisions are made here.

Twenty years on, the modular idea is still in the product line: a design philosophy that met resistance became the premise of every main machine that followed. In the year to March 2026 the Robot Solutions segment posted revenue of $1.1B (¥169bn) and segment profit of $212.6M (¥34bn). Set against consolidated revenue of $564.9M (¥61bn) in the year NXT was completed, it shows how far the design thinking behind a single machine series lifted the size of the company.