Development

Our medium-term management plan defines a growth strategy to concentrate our development resources in three key areas: Green Innovation (GR) to achieve carbon neutrality, Life Innovation (LI) to promote health and welfare, and Internet of Things/Artificial Intelligence (IoT/AI) to support innovative manufacturing based on networks and big data. Adopting an open innovation paradigm, we will vigorously advance development, going beyond limits of our existing businesses to create new future businesses.

Green Innovation (GR)

Together with the world's largest carbon fiber supplier, Toray Industries, Inc., we, Toray Engineering, have been developing molding and processing technologies for carbon fiber composite materials. Currently, we are developing AFP/ATL* equipment that can handle complicated shapes using our unique pneumatically-controlled parallel link mechanism, and a composite-material 3D printer that produces products maintaining the strength of carbon fiber reinforced resin by adopting One-of-a-kind “core shell method.” With the open innovation scheme, we will push these developments forward, collaborating with various companies and universities in Japan and overseas.

*AFP/ATL (Automated Fiber Placement /Automated Tape Layup): a forming technology to place/lay fiber-reinforced composites in the shape of, for example, unidirectional (UD), continuous, fiber-reinforced tape

Life Innovation (LI)

For nucleic acid medicines that are expected to be next-generation therapeutics for cancers and rare disease treatment, we have developed a synthesizer, Molecutideser®, and the manufacturing system for such medicines. We are developing surgery assistant robots with a medical device venture; their unique force feedback function provides surgeons a subtle sense during manipulation and helps them perform surgeries at difficult sites.

IoT/AI

We are developing technology to apply our proprietary laser transfer printing technology developed for the MicroLED display production machine, "RAP-LLO ™ *", for the installation and transfer of semiconductor devices that increasingly become smaller and thinner.
AI technology is applied for improved accuracy of defect detection and sorting in a semiconductor inspection process. We are now developing new detection and sorting technologies based on big data analysis and the Mahalanobis-Taguchi (MT) method for further accuracy improvement.

*RAP-LLO™ : Random Access Patterned Laser Lift Off