Japanese Job shop report-Hamano Products(2/2)

Hamano Products

Hamano Products(photo=A lool of a well-organized factory) conducts die mold production and component cutting centering on precision sheet metal machining.

Hamano Products has grown rapidly over the past 20 years.

The number of employees increased from two in 2000 to 45 in 2018, and the number of companies trading increased from four to about 2500.

Business partners are also diverse, including medical, automotive, and amusement-related industries.

President Keiichi Hamano said that “we are not strong in processing technologies.”

Management initiatives such as “Garage Sumida” are the reasons for growth.

“Garage Sumida,” a new management system

Hamano Products started Garage Sumida with a sense of crisis about the decline of SMEs in manufacturing.

“Manufacturing is originally a series of processes from planning, development/design, prototype and mass-production processing to sales and maintenance.  Most SMEs are engaged only in the prototype and mass-production areas,” president Hamano said.

In the conventional business model, all of the design, delivery time, and amount are led by the client.  There are also ways to sell high processing technology, but not all SMEs can improve technology.

As the birthrate declines and the aging of the population, labor shortages progress, and there is also a problem of inheritance of technology.  “From the perspective of designing products as a whole, it may not be necessary for each component to be of high accuracy,” said President Hamano. “The job shob, like us, which is engaged in manufacturing for a long time, knows this very well.”

One of the concrete examples of the “commercialization” of the know-how cultivated over many years was “Garage Sumida.  In 2015, the company created the Design Department, which began to receive integrated orders from product design to mass-production(photo=Hamano Products original products).

The company conducts design from the viewpoint of the processor to optimize the function, ease of processing, and cost of the product.

That has a good reputation from business partners, and the number of cases in which large enterprises come to consult at the stage of design has increased.

Garage Sumida also played a key role in helping venture companies deepen their relationships with big companies.  There are many venture companies work with big companies.  Cooperation with venture companies provides an opportunity to learn about Hamano Products.

President Hamano said, “It’s at least 10 billion yen in the market that major companies can start in earnest. Smaller projects are going to go to us, but from the perspective of us, it’s a very big market. Such projects will continue to grow.”

The future of Hamano Products is bright.