Yoshinaga Seki
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
He joined Mitsubishi Shipbuilding in 1915 and moved to electrical machinery upon the founding of Mitsubishi Electric. In the mid-1930s, as head of the machining section at the Kobe Works, he supervised the training of new employees. He served as Executive Vice President under President Shinichi Takasugi and was one of the senior executives who judged that, to continue the technical alliance with Westinghouse of the U.S., protecting the company name and trademark and keeping the company in one piece were absolute conditions. He was a career engineer who had moved over from shipbuilding.
Selection
In 1956 Shinichi Takasugi stepped back to Chairman and Yoshinaga Seki became president. Takasugi called Seki his trusted ally and wrote that because Seki examined problems from every angle before reaching a conclusion, he could agree to his plans and proposals unconditionally. In the fiscal year ended March 1956, the year before he took office, non-consolidated net sales were ¥25.0 billion and operating income ¥1.7 billion, less than half the ¥3.9 billion of FY ended March 1954. The dividend had been cut to 18% in FY ended March 1955.
Initiatives
Around 1959 he brought back from partner Westinghouse a prototype integrated circuit about one centimeter square and ordered the Central Research Laboratory to make the same thing. The laboratory devised a manufacturing method and commercialized it in 1961 under the name "Molectron," Japan's first domestically made IC. In August 1959 the company opened the Kita-Itami Plant, dedicated solely to mass-producing semiconductors. It built the Kamakura Works in 1960 and the Kyoto and Sagami Works in 1962.
Career
Career
Mitsubishi Electric
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| 1956 | President |
| Nov 1964 | Stepped down as President |