Research & Development

Innovation (Research & Development)

R&D activities at Yokogawa are classified into two types. Firstly, product development and applied research activities are geared to meeting customer needs and target a relatively foreseeable future. Secondly, innovation activities are conducted from a longer-term perspective, involve greater uncertainty, and are directed toward the generation of new business opportunities. Whereas business headquarters are mainly responsible for the former, the latter is primarily the task of the Global Innovation Center.

The mission of the Global Innovation Center is twofold

1. Contribute to customers' value creation(Co-creation) through the interconnection of internal and external organizations, including customers' organizations.
2. Devise innovative scenarious and incorporate them in research and development activities to nurture future business.

 

R&D structure at Yokogawa

 

 

Innovation Activities

By engaging in innovation activities, Yokogawa not only provides systems but also creates technologies and solutions together with customers that prompt them to change their perspectives and approaches. The innovation process consists of three concentric layers as show in the figure below. The outermost layer, consisting of information from the field and signs of change obtained by scanning the "external environment," such as markets and customers, is reflected in "standardization, intellectual property and open innovation," which constitute the second layer that supports "innovation activities," the innermost layer. In innovation activities, we generated ideas, refine the technologies to realize the ideas through R&D, and incubate them. A cycle of these three stages is executed repeatedly to achieve commercialization.

 

 

 

 

Yokogawa's R&D Strategy

The basic concept of Yokogawa's R&D activities is to develop and provide more effective means of providing value to customers in the next 10 years, based on a broad perspective and a deep understanding of customer issues. The Global Innovation Center conducts R&D activities on three themes.

• Energy & Sustainability Innovation
• Material Innovation
• Life Innovation

Energy&Sustainability Innovation supports optimal operations throughout the value chain of the process industry to enable diversifying industrial automation to achieve the greater efficiency and autonomy. Life Innovation contributes to the rapid development of the pharmaceuticals that protect people's lives and health and to the quick establishment of multi-product, small-lot production processes. Material Innovation aims to realize a new recycling-oriented society by taking on new challenges in new fields.