Nipro assumes its role and establishes a stable supply

What do you think is the role of Japanese pharmaceutical companies in developing niche technologies and how can Japan contribute to the worldwide healthcare and pharmaceutical markets?

Nipro President, Yoshihiko Sano replies :

Compared to other countries, the Japanese mindset is based on the concept of doing good things in three aspects: buyers, employees, and society. With this mindset the goal is to pursue long term benefits for the employees and society. The employees, as they try to respond to the needs of the users, will get the benefit and feel motivated in the long term. Since we have been doing this practice in our company the quality of our service has improved quite significantly. 

The development of the production line takes a long time. When we wanted the fully automated production line it required a lot of effort and time; we had to overcome a number of challenges. To establish a fully automated production line requires a high level of technology and expert engineers - it also requires a lot of time to train the engineers. We are deeply rooted to the concept of Sanpo-yoshi in which we are good at keeping and improving the quality of our products and technology for a long period of time. With this mindset, Japan is strong when it comes to the improvements in production. For other countries that do not have this kind of business mindset it might be difficult for them to spend five to ten years making a profit. 

In the medical industry, to which Nipro belongs, we can never stop supplying our products to hospitals even during natural disasters. If we are affected by a natural disaster and we stop providing the hospitals with our products, this will endanger the lives of the patients. After a natural disaster has occurred it is often said that the first three hours are the most critical, second is the first three days. We have to continuously supply our products to the medical facilities or else, if we wait for a week the patients’ lives will be in danger. The medical industry is different from other industries for this very reason.  

To establish a stable supply requires spending a significant amount for the production processes, and that is why we have two production sites. As a company in the medical industry, we must meet this requirement even though it can be costly. The medical industry goes hand in hand with the pharmaceutical industry and the medicine manufacturing industry. The medical system as a whole will not work if any of these three is lacking.  

Furthermore, there is no company that has the comprehensive production line from the raw material to the finished products, and for this reason there is always a network among the manufacturers of these products. We even exchange information with our competitors on a regular basis.