Former Seiko Corporation president and CEO Reinosuke Hara lectured students and faculty on the manufacturing industry in McCool Hall’s Taylor Auditorium Tuesday.In his speech he discussed how the industry acts on a global basis, focusing on micro-level management strategies and research and development.
Hara said the United States is a leader in creating new businesses that replace old industries while Japanese companies tend to diversify their companies.
“In the United States and Europe, whenever you move into another field, you always try to buy other companies for merger and acquisition,” Hara said. “This is a common practice, where as in Japan and Asia, we try to diversify with our own strengths and capabilities.”
Hara used Samsung as an example in his lecture. He said Samsung has branches in electronics, heavy machinery, chemicals and financial groups. He also said the life cycle of products is getting smaller and smaller.
“Before, for example, one model of an automobile would easily last three or five years,” Hara said. “Now every two years automobile manufactures put a new model into the market.”
Hara’s speech also focused on product safety and the importance of research and development. He cited lithium-ion batteries that have exploded and steel beams that have collapsed as examples of products that have received further research and study in order to become safer.
He said it is important for students to understand research and development.
“Everything in the new industries come from research and development, to which the university plays an important role,” he said. “Everything starts with research and development, and [that] starts with universities.”
Hara said universities are great places for research and development because scientists and professors are able to perform their ideas with a reasonable amount of freedom.
He said when products fail, for example, lithium-ion battery explosions, the only way to deal with the problem is to analyze what went wrong and not cover up the mistakes.
Jung Shim, professor of management and information systems and moderator for the speech, said students should pay attention to Hara’s global viewpoint on industry.
“Many students here are born [and raised] in Mississippi,” Shim said. “Many of them didn’t have a chance to travel overseas. We should understand what is going on in other parts of the world.”
University Provost Peter Rabideau said he has known Hara since the mid-nineties when they worked together at Louisiana State University. Rabideau was the dean of science and Hara was on the college advisory council.
Hara was the Scientific Secretary of the United Nation’s first Atom for Peace conference secretariat. He was also awarded The Royal Order of the Polar Star by the King of Sweden and the Blue Ribbon Medal from the Japanese government.
Rabideau said universities benefit from speakers like Hara, especially MSU, because it is in a rural area that not many people pass through.
“We have to bring in visitors by our own efforts and be aggressive in bringing in visitors, because otherwise our students are not going to see people from outside of Northern Mississippi,” he said. “They can get different perspectives, especially in this day and age in our global society.”
Sophomore international business major Laura Vaughn said she learned about the diversity found in Asian companies from Hara’s lecture.
“I was very surprised by a few things he said, for example how Samsung has a chemical branch, because when you think of Samsung, you think of technology,” Vaughn said.
Vaughn also said she thinks the United States should learn from Asian companies.