Functional Changes in the Technological Core of the Japanese Machinery Industry in Ota-ku, Tokyo

Abstract

The industrial area in the southern part of inner Tokyo, of which the center is Ota-ku, developed in the second half of the 1960s, playing an important role as the technological core in the regional system of the machinery industry in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It coped with technological innovations such as microelectronics (ME) in the 1980s through its own efforts. Although the numbers of factories and employees have declined due to severe economic conditions since the 1990s, the function of the industrial area as the technological center has advanced. In addition to the first generation who founded their companies just after World War II based on their skillful machining technology, the younger generation has joined as managers or leading engineers. Most of the younger generation are highly educated and have learned ME technology as well as new management methods. Both groups have crystallized and upgraded the technological level of each factory. The renewed and vitalized factories are classified in the following three categories: processors of high-level of technology in response to various demands of machine manufacturers; manufacturers generating high-quality but very small lot products; and manufacturers of plot-type or those specialized in developing or testing for large machine manufacturers. These three types have common characteristics that are indispensable to each other and depend on numerous subcontracting processors in their vicinity. As a result, a strong industrial complex continues in Ota-ku with businesses upgrading their technology through mutual cooperation. Although a huge technological complex of the machinery industry existed in Ota-ku until the 1980s under the control of big manufacturers, this production system has been in the course of radical change since the 1990s. The technological complex with interfirm cooperation and interactive learning processes led by powerful small and medium enterprises is in transition to a horizontal relationship with big manufacturers. Most of the new generation was born and grew up in this area. They make their industrial community a substantial one through the interchange not only of business but also of social life involving the older generation. The industrial community has become a very important factor that sustains the strong technological complex. As a result of strengthening the technological complex, Ota-ku has increased its role as a regional innovation base for upgrading the Japanese machinery industry and as the core of its new regional division of labor system.