Message from the President

Oiles Corporation reached the milestone of 70 years in business on March 11, 2022. The fact that we have been able to stay in business for this long is entirely thanks to all our stakeholders, customers, shareholders, business partners, and others who have been a part of what we do. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to you all.

Since founder Sozo Kawasaki established our predecessor Nippon Oilless Bearing Research and Development Co., Ltd. on March 11, 1952, and invented Japan’s first wooden self-lubricating bearing, we have brought countless products to market through our original technologies, with tribology technology (friction, wear and lubrication) and damping technology (vibration control) at the core.
Our management philosophy is to become a world leader as a general manufacturer of self-lubricating bearings and serve society through technology. The desire to serve society through technology, handed down from our founder, is a universal value of our Group which we have always sought to embody.

Our Group’s portfolio consists of three businesses: bearings, structural devices, and architectural devices. A bearing with oil-less characteristics (self-lubricating bearing) contributes to reducing environmental impact. For example, in the automotive industry, where the shift to EVs is underway, the lighter weight and lower friction of oil-less bearings contribute to the long-distance driving of EVs. In addition, structural devices (seismic isolators and vibration control devices) that protect people, buildings, and facilities from large-scale earthquakes play an important role in providing safety and security in earthquake-prone Japan. Moreover, architectural devices such as our Window Operators protect human lives from the risk of smoke inhalation due to fire and provide safety, security, and comfort to society by supporting building ventilation, an essential countermeasure against infection.

With such contributions, I believe that all three businesses of our Group have a role in resolving the social issues identified in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a sense, I believe that our businesses, in and of themselves, have a high potential to contribute to society and embody our corporate philosophy of serving society through technology. To share what we aim for as a company within the Group, we revised our Group’s long-term vision in fiscal 2020. The greatest image of the company we wish to become is a “Company that contributes to the preservation of the global environment and delivers safety, security, and comfort through products and technologies that the world requires."
We will commit ourselves to consistently providing products and technologies that lead to solutions for social issues and contributing to the SDGs through our core businesses. This purpose will be shared among the Group, and with the 100-year milestone in our sights, we will channel social issues into our corporate value.

Sustainability, including ESG elements, is a key management priority. Our Group, however, positions CSR promotion as the mainstay of our corporate activities, believing that promoting CSR (ESG) is the foundation for creating new corporate value.

Regarding our environmental initiatives, in FY2021, we set a new ecological target to “reduce total CO2 emissions by 46% from the FY2013 level by FY2030” as a contribution to the global goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and we are pushing forward with efforts to achieve it. In FY2021, we upgraded the facilities at the Fujisawa Plant, for example, by starting full-scale solar power generation with in-house equipment and switching to LED lights. We will continue our efforts, including bolstering the environmental awareness of every employee. We also aim to address environmental issues through our core business by offering products and technologies that reduce the environmental impact. Primarily in our bearings business, we are bolstering initiatives in various fields such as the electrification of cars, renewable energy, and hydrogen energy. Our efforts in technological and product development are driven by the conviction that our technologies and products have grand potential for contributions to the global environment.

As stated in our medium-term management policy, “to create an environment and culture where employees’ diversity is respected, and employees can grow together with the company,” we are promoting diversity and dedicating effort to human resources development based on the conviction that human resources are the source of our value creation. In terms of respect for the diversity of employees, we aim to establish workplaces that support both diversity and inclusion. We have a low ratio of female employees due to the nature of the manufacturing industry. However, we are engaged in efforts to turn this around from a medium- to long-term perspective. The diversity targets we established in FY2021 state not only the goal of increasing the ratio of female managers but also increasing our ratio of female new graduate employees to around 30%. People are the human capital that drives our value creation. Therefore, We are also working to establish working environments conducive to employee growth and to boost employee engagement so that employees and the company are on the same page.

In terms of our corporate governance system, we are experiencing new beginnings as a listed company following our move to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in April 2022. We are working on initiatives such as achieving diversity in our Board of Directors and improving our ratio of outside directors (ratio of independent outside directors: one-third). We will continue our efforts to build an even more effective corporate governance system.

Together, as one, we will strive ceaselessly to achieve continuous growth along the path from our 70th anniversary toward our 100th and beyond. We look forward to the continued support of all our stakeholders.

President

Yoshikazu Sakairi