Product Development

DEVELOPMENT

Overcoming difficulties through trial and error

SHIP

We engage in improving the performance and reducing the cost of existing marine equipment, as well as developing new models.

We ventured into the area of agricultural equipment and are making our best efforts to make this our next main line of business. We are thus actively engaging in the technological development of agricultural equipment. To meet the regulations enhanced in 2020 for marine equipment in terms of environmental protection, we have been working on developing new products. Working with agricultural equipment was not easy when we started developing and designing it as we were primarily working with marine equipment up to that time. However, hydroponic equipment is the main line of our agricultural equipment, and our expertise in designing marine equipment, such as pumps, valves, piping, and tanks was transferable to designing hydroponic equipment. Also, designing a factory to grow plants involves electrical controls such as controlling LEDs, air conditioning, various sensors, and carbon dioxide concentration adjustment that we were familiar with. Now we are as enthusiastic about working with agricultural equipment as we are about marine equipment. One major difference from marine equipment, however, is that we are dealing with living creatures. We cannot develop good products unless we understand plants and technology associated with them well enough. We have been developing our agricultural engineering products in consultation with employees with specialized knowledge regarding agriculture. Leveraging our expertise in both marine and agricultural equipment, we recently developed hydroponic equipment to be used on ships. Fresh vegetables are difficult to acquire during a long marine voyage. We continue to improve our equipment to provide vegetables safely and reliably. It is inevitable that we encounter some difficulties when we develop new products, whether it is a marine product or agricultural product. We overcome such difficulties through continuous development, with concerted effort among our engineering team members, which often leads us to acquire new know-how.

In the waves of the fourth industrial revolution where artificial intelligence (AI) and robot technologies are combined with IoT technologies, it is becoming imperative that manufactures like us take advantage of the trend of this time. The most important point is not only that we make use of the latest technologies, but also that our customers are satisfied. We continue to endeavor with a keen interest in quality, agility in development, and cost.

Shuji Tatsumi
R. & D. Department