artience Strengths | Integrated Report 2024Technology and Intellectual Property Strategy for Creating New Value through a Combination of Internal and External Sources

An advantage that we have is that we possess numerous businesses and a wide variety of technologies that support them. For example, there are many different products in the adhesives category, including pressure sensitive adhesives, laminating adhesives and hot-melt adhesives. Customers do not want pressure sensitive adhesives per se. They want to bond something. I believe it is a big advantage to possess many methods to do that.
Our leading products include the polymers used in labels, packaging materials and other products. Products based on this same technology can be applied in semiconductor sealing and adhesion by also using additional technologies. By applying technologies used to manufacture low-priced multipurpose items in other areas, it is possible to increase added value ten fold or, in some cases, 100 fold.

We are putting our development efforts into the semiconductor field. We see it as the technology following the CNT dispersions for LiBs technology, which we are currently working hard on. Semiconductors are now at a major turning point. The industry is shifting to three-dimensional (3D) packaging arising from the need for higher-capacity and higher-speed semiconductors. Since its beginning, manufacturers with a proven track record have had an overwhelming advantage in the semiconductor market. However, during a structural change, there are opportunities for new players to enter the market. Specifically, the 3D packaging of semiconductors is connected to a heat problem. And it raises some unprecedented questions regarding how this heat should be dissipated and how the stress arising from the heat should be mitigated. They create big opportunities for new competitors to enter the market.
My understanding is that value that resonates with the senses means that we should offer value that exceeds customers’ expectations. We wish to turn elaborate proposals into reality using science. I believe that this will lead to future development and the creation of new businesses.

We have created a database of technologies that we developed in past that we use as a technology platform. I would like to develop it into a more advanced exclusively internal artificial intelligence (AI).
The artience Group has a large number of business divisions. Inevitably, walls emerge between divisions. The walls between organizations tend to block the exchange of information and engineers.
The years of experience accumulated by the company is meaningless if it cannot be fully utilized. We should keep sound records about the objectives of experiments, discussions and what the engineers thought about them in addition to the results and make sure that the data can be easily retrieved. That may sound easy but is in fact more difficult than expected. We will use the AI as a means of solving questions, hoping that the data will be easier to search and that the information that we desire will be easily obtained.

If our technologies alone are insufficient to bring a new idea into reality, we want to be able to search for and immediately contact the personnel in the Group who are capable of making it possible or who are familiar with the related domains beyond the organizational boundaries. We would like to develop a system that will allow us to do this. Connections between people will make it easier to create new things.
We will not just implement this initiative in Japan. We will develop a system that includes overseas bases as well. The system will allow us to ask questions without hesitating, and someone familiar with the field will respond. In some cases, dispatching personnel may help speedily resolve global issues to open the way toward sales and differentiation. We will establish a mechanism like that.

I was president of Toyochem Co., Ltd. until December 2023. In an initiative unique to the company, we called on all of its employees to take on the smallest challenges and launched an award program to honor outstanding people who took on challenges. Take on challenges without fearing failure. Small challenges will lead to bigger ones, generating new technologies and profits. I suppose that this initiative, in addition to the exchange of technologies and personnel, has helped created a good corporate culture.
We hope to spread the culture of taking on challenges without fear of failure to the entire Group. I think this is a part of my duties.

We will of course work to steadily achieve results as mentioned in the medium-term management plan. The technology departments of the operating companies conduct short- and long-term development projects while the R&D Department of artience Co., Ltd. is engaged in long-term projects. They each work with an eye toward what will be future core businesses.
To thrive in ten years, we will leveraging backcasting to develop a scenario for corporate growth. Valuing uniqueness of artience, we will establish technologies to win out over our competitors. In this process, if we cannot develop technologies using our own resources alone, we will in the future need to conduct activities to gaining new technologies from outside the Group, such as technologies from start-ups and universities overseas and in Japan.
The integration of our technologies and these outside technologies may open the way toward a new combination of art and science and toward serendipitous development. One good example is the inner coating of the Nama Jokki Can (Draft mug can) created through the open innovation with Asahi Breweries.
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Another thing that I wish to focus on is using intellectual property well. We are working to turn newly developed technologies into patents, and we will also turn the technologies that we take for granted and already use into patents. In addition, the speed with which we apply for a patent is vital when it comes to intellectual property. We embarked on activities for to realize AI-assisted intellectual property management with the goal of quickly securing intellectual property rights for inventions and creations using artificial intelligence. We will strategically utilize intellectual property to strongly aid sales activities.
To accelerate development, we will set up an overseas R&D organization to improve our overseas engineering teams. We hope to develop more specialists and more distinctive personnel in Japan and overseas. We will review our personnel treatment to encourage them to take on new challenges that they find rewarding. We will develop this kind of corporate culture in the whole Group.