Extending control technology into public infrastructure — the social systems business and the world’s first unmanned station (1967)

Offering control to the side of society

What this decision shows is the idea of carrying control technology, developed for factory automation, across into the infrastructure of society itself — station operations, traffic, finance. Combining pattern recognition that could tell a genuine coin from a false one, for the ticket machine, with an electronic computer gave OMRON its own command of cybernation, then the newest technology available, and that led on to unmanned stations, traffic control and cash dispensers. The character of the business is visible in the choice not to confine control to the inside of the production line but to treat the workings of society as the thing to be automated.

At the same time, the pattern of opening a market first and then ceding share to larger latecomers repeated itself. The world’s first practical online cash dispenser gave way to Fujitsu and Hitachi, which could take on a financial institution’s systems as a whole, and OMRON could not hold the initiative. Even so, social systems — station operations, payments, traffic — remains a pillar alongside factory automation to this day. The question of whether a technical head start converts into a business advantage was, it seems, put to Tateishi Electric early in this field too.