Building the cutting machine in-house — wheel, machine and application under one roof (1975)

What it means for a wheel maker to build machines

It built machines in order to sell wheels, and looked up to find it had become a precision machinery maker — that is how Sekiya Kenichi’s summary reads. What was missing in the United States was not the abrasive but a party willing to take responsibility for the result, the cut itself. In an industry where the division of labour was taken for granted, carrying all three roles inside one company was heavy for a firm of that size. It carried them anyway because otherwise the wheels would not sell — less a strategy chosen than a retreat that had been cut off.

The arrangement was not a strength from the start. Development took seven years; the first machine was handed back as unusable in a semiconductor plant; the cutting method itself was wrong once. Disco’s own works in Kure opposed the move, and machine-tool makers and subcontractors alike turned the work down. The word “trinity” is offered as the explanation of the company emblem only after 95% of the domestic market had been taken. The logic of a strength, one could say, is usually assembled after the win.