ABOUT THE COMPANY

Showa Precision Tools Co., Ltd is a Yokohama-based company which was established in 1954 and started its business with the manufacturing of cemented carbide drawing dies. The company currently employs 100 people and has been engaged in the conception and manufacturing of high-precision dies, special dies and precision parts machining for many products such as cars, food and beverage containers, communication equipment, optical lenses and next generation batteries among others.

Showa Precision Tools has about 50 years of experience in the manufacturing of fineblanking dies since they have been involved in such activity continuously since 1971. It has now become an internationally recognized company as it is selling its precision dies to several major car parts manufacturers of Europe and North America. The precision shear technology developed by Showa Precision Tools can achieve a sheared surface of 80% of the material plate’s thickness at a speed of 80 shots per minute. Tests conducted on high-rigidity presses show that about 100,000 shots can be done with this technology while keeping tight dimensional and flatness tolerances. Besides, with this high-speed precision shear technology, complex parts can be blanked simultaneously which results in bringing competitivity to the customer thanks to a higher production speed and a better material yield.

Mr. Mitsuru Dohi, sales manager in charge of the company’s overseas business for automobile and electronic parts, shared with us how Showa Precision Tools developed its business to the international market. He explained that they chose to build joint ventures with Japanese companies already having operations in Asian and Latin American target countries as a strategy to overcome the language and culture differences with local automobile parts manufacturers. Showa Precision Tools currently has such business alliances in Thailand, China and Mexico that were concluded respectively in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The company achieves international sales of approximately 200 million-yen which account for 5 to 10% of the company’s total annual turnover. These sales mostly come from the US, Italy, and other countries in Europe and Asia (Germany, Mexico, China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia). As a sales professional, Mr. Mitsuru Dohi has participated to exhibitions in Europe, the United States and China and has worked on developing the company’s customer base in these countries, on some occasions even walking in potential customers’ facilities. Due to the increasingly growing demand of the electric vehicles (EV), the demand for many automobile parts currently requiring a precision shear cut will decrease. For these reasons, Showa Precision Tools is now working hard to enter the global value chain of other industries using fineblanking parts.