Growing Determination
KAZUO TSUKUDA
President
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.
GLOBALIZATION. If one word were chosen to describe the core focus of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) today, it would be “globalization.” The company already boasts an orders-based export ratio topping 50%, but according to President Kazuo Tsukuda, the 50% figure is only one milestone along a progressively ascendant curve. “Today, we’re accelerating our initiatives to strengthen our production and sales networks globally and strategically.”
MHI, a leading member of the Mitsubishi Group, has operations in fields as all-embracing as power systems, general machinery, transportation systems, ships, printing presses, machine tools, aircraft and aerospace rockets. Today, the company is taking assertive steps to boost the presence of its various offerings in overseas markets even further. “We have two principal targets,” explains Tsukuda. “First, we aim to steadily enhance our competitive position in the global markets. Second, we look to attract expanded business opportunities through the establishment of overseas operating bases and alliances with local enterprises.”
“We’re accelerating our initiatives to
strengthen our production and sales
networks globally and strategically.”
MHI is pursuing enhanced competitiveness in two main ways. First, the company has incorporated the following three fundamental strategies into its current medium-term business plan: build a solid earnings structure, strengthen the production technology base, and secure the full trust of both customers and society at large. Those strategies are clearly starting to yield tangible results. In the first half of fiscal 2007, MHI posted robust year-on-year increases in orders, in sales and in net profit.
Second, MHI is vigorously addressing environmental needs. The company, in its own words, is “engineering the future,” and in doing so 21st-century environmental demands are inevitably accorded top priority. MHI is out in front with a host of development programs all targeting energy conservation and environmental protection. Already its state-of-the-art wind turbines, photovoltaic modules, gas turbine combined-cycle (GTCC) plants, advanced pressurized water reactors for nuclear power plants in the United States (US-APWR) and flue-gas CO2 recovery systems—to name but a sampling of its 700-plus product menu—are in strong demand. The company is also working proactively to prevent global warming as a solid promoter of a growing list of CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) projects established under the Kyoto Protocol.
In its quest to cultivate more business opportunities worldwide, MHI is looking to four main markets. “Our core focuses are the U.S., Europe, China and the other countries of Asia,” Tsukuda notes. “In the U.S., for example, we’re winning increased orders for our wind turbines, and to build up our production system, we’re expanding our plant facilities in Mexico.” In Europe, the company has established a joint venture in France to develop and sell a new reactor for nuclear power plants. In China, it has concluded licensing agreements in wind turbines with local partners. In Russia, it has reached an agreement on collaborating with a local heavy electrical machinery manufacturer in the gas turbine and steam turbine business. And in India, a country undergoing dynamic economic growth, MHI has concluded agreements on the formation of two joint ventures: one to manufacture and market supercritical pressure boilers for coal-fired power plants, the other to make and sell steam turbines and generators for such plants. In these and other ways, MHI is aggressively moving to fortify its production systems worldwide.
With its globalization drive now firmly in motion, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, under Tsukuda’s focused leadership, is destined to be a name ever more widely recognized around the world in the years ahead.
