{"id":5587,"date":"2024-09-12T06:50:47","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T06:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/?post_type=qa&p=5587"},"modified":"2026-01-09T06:04:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T06:04:44","slug":"qa-samco-inc","status":"publish","type":"qa","link":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/qa\/qa-samco-inc\/","title":{"rendered":"Samco Inc."},"content":{"rendered":"

GK had the chance to sit down with Osamu Tsuji<\/strong>, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of semiconductor firm SAMCO Inc.<\/strong> based in Kyoto, for an insightful interview focused on business culture and the future of technology.<\/p>\n

Could you elaborate on why the business environment and entrepreneurship in Kyoto are so unique, compared to that of Tokyo or other parts of Japan?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kathryn Ibata-Arens contributed to many studies on Japanese innovation and her book references her doctoral thesis. Within, she showcased a thesis by one of her peers which is called the \u2018Diamond Model\u2019 which outlines the four elements that lead to the success of local businesses. They are human resources, finance, markets, and demand.<\/p>\n

I believe Kyoto does not fit into this model since we lack the aforementioned local demand \u2013 for example, we are producing CVD equipment, however, there are no clients for it within Kyoto, rather we are shipping our solutions to Tokyo, Kyushu, or overseas. This diamond model does not fit Kyoto, and I think we are shaped more like a \u2018tulip\u2019 since we lack that fourth pillar.<\/p>\n

In this case, Kyoto\u2019s entrepreneurship is different from that of others as we as a community set our sights on the global stage very early on and I myself was born and raised here and harbor no intentions of relocating our HQ.<\/p>\n

Your company produces a wide variety of equipment for use in this industry, from CVD apparatus used to create thin films to reactive ion etching (RIE) machines.\u202fHow has the increased interest in domestic semiconductor production in Japan affected your business? <\/strong><\/p>\n

The final factor is entrepreneurship. I think this is still very alive in Kyoto. Unfortunately, in terms of GDP, Japan was overtaken by Germany, in addition to the United States and China. Likely this is due to the depreciation of the Japanese yen, and we have witnessed a slow pace of GDP growth. We have to take back our crown and I believe the key here is the semiconductor industry.<\/p>\n

This industry looks very promising with many actors setting up locations in Kumamoto and Hokkaido with the help of the Japanese government. New factories will start to operate next month in Kumamoto.<\/p>\n

It used to take 5-10 years, however, in the case of Japan, it took only 3 years to reach the level we are at now. Even the semiconductor giant from Taiwan, TSMC, took 20 years to set up their infrastructure.<\/p>\n

What new products are you looking to introduce in the near future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, we always try to create something new, not the products that are always widely seen. The main pillar is the development of CVD technology, dry etching equipment, or dry cleaners.<\/p>\n

I believe that it is very promising that they can be applied in wider areas since thanks to the technology to make thin films. They can be applied to aerospace and automobiles and they can contribute to lightweight vehicles and the cost-efficiency of them. Conventional vehicles are very heavy, though thanks to lightweight reinforced plastic, we can reduce the weight by around 1\/10th, meaning they can also be used in life sciences, the medical field to produce artificial organs, and so on.<\/p>\n

Through collaboration with academia such as Kyoto University, we are very active in developing new technology along with academic studies and this is how we are always pushing forward. Hopefully, we can improve efficiency and productivity by 10-20% along with profits in the global market. That is how we set up our joint research center 20 years ago with the University of Cambridge along with Silicon Valley where we set up another research center.<\/p>\n

That is how we have a subsidiary in Lichtenstein, called SAMCO UCP and we achieved collaboration with OST (Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences) \u2013 that is how we are looking for new fields and increasing the capability of new material development.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GK had the chance to sit down with Osamu Tsuji, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of semiconductor firm SAMCO Inc. based in Kyoto, for an insightful interview focused on business culture and the future of technology. Could you elaborate on why the business environment and entrepreneurship in Kyoto are so unique, compared to that of Tokyo or other parts of Japan? Kathryn Ibata-Arens contributed to many studies on Japanese innovation and her book references her doctoral thesis. Within, she showcased a thesis by one of her peers which is called the \u2018Diamond Model\u2019 which outlines the four elements that lead to the success of local businesses. They are human resources, finance, […]<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":6292,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[23,46,49,48],"class_list":["post-5587","qa","type-qa","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-japan","tag-manufacturing","tag-rd","tag-semiconductor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/qa\/5587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/qa"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/qa"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/qa\/5587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7716,"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/qa\/5587\/revisions\/7716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-kigyo.com\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}