Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

THE JAPANESE government is struggling to save a $1 billion (about Pounds
sterling 600 million) international project to design the ‘factory of the
future’ in the face of widespread scepticism. The project, called the Intelligent
Manufacturing System (IMS), was originally due to get under way last month
following an international conference. IMS organisers have now set this
back to September – but they now say one of the three managing partners,
the European Commission, is putting pressure on European companies not to
join in.

The IMS seeks to set international standards for equipment needed to
automate factories – for example, so that one manufacturer’s computer program
will control another manufacturer’s robot. Standardisation is currently
a huge problem in industry .

The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), which
is setting up the project, believes that removing these technical barriers
will give a big boost to international trade in factory technologies. Instead
of companies developing their own techniques in-house, they would be able
to buy and sell manufacturing technologies on the world market. In time,
companies may find it more profitable to sell manufacturing techniques rather
than products. MITI hopes that this trend will reduce global tensions over
imbalances of trade.

MITI first floated the idea of the IMS project late last year. Tokyo
proposed that the US, Europe and Japan join forces over the next 10 years.
Participating companies would share Japan’s strength in building factories,
the US’s lead in computer software and Europe’s skills in building very
precise machine tools.

The idea caused consternation in all three regions. Many Japanese companies
were unhappy at the idea of sharing their secrets in organising factories
efficiently, for example in ‘flexible automation’ – the ability to build
production lines capable of turning out many different products. In approaching
the US, MITI now admits that it made the mistake of going through a professional
institution, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. The US government saw
this as an attempt to bypass the Department of Commerce, which is trying
to control what it sees as a leakage of advanced technologies to Japanese
firms.

Meanwhile the European Commission saw the project as an attempt to sidestep
its own measures to set standards in factory technology, the ‘factory of
the future’ project which is part of the Commission’s Esprit research programme.
Officials in Brussels were also furious at what they believed was a fait
accompli presented by MITI – the publication in May of a 25-page brochure
describing the project. Officials at MITI now claim that this was only a
preliminary document for discussion.

MITI has spent most of the past six months mending fences. First, it
has twisted the arms of about 80 companies to join the project as ‘core
members’, paying 1 million yen (about Pounds sterling 4000) a month each.
The members include Japan’s biggest engineering firms Hitachi and Toshiba,
the car giants Toyota and Nissan, and its largest makers of computers, Fujitsu
and NEC.

Three American companies have also joined, as well as the Japanese subsidiaries
of the US-based multinationals IBM and Xerox. Meanwhile, at conferences
in Brussels and Washington in May, MITI persuaded the US and European Community
to join preliminary discussions of the project – on the understanding that
MITI, the Department of Commerce and the European Commission’s directorate
of information technology work together to draw up the rules.

Both Europe and the US have hedged their agreement to take part. Officially,
the US has agreed only to ‘bilateral discussions concerning the IMS, to
be established on a multilateral basis’. The EC says only that it will take
part in ‘prior discussion’. So far MITI has received 114 proposals for IMS
research projects. Of these, 79 are from Japan and 22 from the US.

Several thorny issues remain. First is the question of who will gain
the commercial benefits from any inventions that emerge from the joint effort.
The US is likely to demand tight controls, arguing that Japan’s giant conglomerate
companies are able to act much more quickly than most American and European
companies in turning new inventions into products.

Europe’s attitude is another thorny question. Publicly, officials of
MITI put a brave face on Europe’s coolness, saying they are anxious to avoid
conflicts with the European Commission and that it is anyway easier to deal
directly with the commission than with separate governments or companies.
Privately, however, officials are anxious to get some big European names
on board.

Officials are still hopeful of getting the IMS project under way. Katsuhiko
Umehara, deputy director of MITI’s Agency of Industrial Science and Technology,
said: ‘The US and Europe have something to contribute and something to gain.’
But in the current climate of suspicion over Japan’s motives, MITI often
finds itself in an impossible position, Umehara said: ‘If we do nothing,
we are criticised. If we do something, we are criticised.’