Dropping switchboards and transformers for “Yaskawa Motors” (1932)

Rebuilding by deciding what to throw away

The heart of this decision was not what to grow but what to discard. The seventeen years of losses were the consequence of a latecomer carrying the same full product range as the incumbents. Daigoro’s move to halt switchboards and transformers and narrow to motors, which the existing plant could actually make well, followed the logic that resources only concentrate once you let go of the ground you cannot win. That skilled engineers had to be released to cut the range shows how far concentration was purchasable only at a price.

It should be said that the focus on motors bore fruit with an outside tailwind behind it — military demand after the Manchurian Incident. Narrowing did not by itself guarantee the return to profit; there is no denying that demand happened to grow where the company had concentrated. Even so, this round trip of spreading and losing, narrowing and reviving, is one Yaskawa would repeat — through the robot business built under bank supervision and on to the ROIC management of recent years. Rebuilding starts by deciding what to abandon: the choice of 1932 was the first statement of the pattern, and it still reads that way today.