Licensing Bühler and Jervis B. Webb: the turn to materials handling (1957)

Technology borrowed, technology kept

Daifuku Kiko could bring in Bühler’s and Webb’s technology because its parent Kanematsu had cut off its funding and it had been driven to the point where its own engineering was the only thing left to rely on. The accumulated deficit had reached ¥60–70 million; roughly 40% of the workforce had been let go and plants had been sold. Masuda Kenjiro talked the other side’s representative round and brought a world-class partner to a company deep in the red. It was the choice of a machine shop with its retreat cut off that opened the road into materials handling.

That said, the tie-ups did not bring stability at once. Localizing the forged chain came with no end of difficulty, and — as the near-collision between the earlier Bühler agreement and the Webb licence showed — holding two lines of borrowed technology at the same time demanded constant adjustment. Even so, the judgement of these years, splicing the forging skills of the founding trade onto transport technology from outside, became the foundation of the specialist maker that would later stretch as far as airports and e-commerce logistics. Where a company borrows its technology, and what it keeps as its own, is where the success or failure of a change of business shows.