Abstract
Die and mold industries started from their technological transfer from USA after World War II, advanced with economical development in Japan and have grown as a top runner all over the world. Owing to long-term economical recession and catching up by Korea and China, they approach to turning point in future. The glass molding industry has already encountered this difficulty due to rapid reduction of domestic products like brown-tube type television sets and CRT. In the present paper, this macroscopic change in the domestic market is statistically described together with microscopic damage in the glass molding companies. In particular, original glass molding technologies were abolished by shrinkage of domestic brown-tube markets and defeated by liquid crystal display at the same time. Standing on this understanding, necessity of frontier technologies is stressed to strengthen the domestic glass molding industries by new linkage between glass-material and optical device makers. New type of up-streaming and down-streaming die and mold technologies is proposed to maintain the domestic production sites as a sustainable strategy for Japan die and mold industry.
