Teradyne K.K.

Teradyne K.K. started business in Japan as early as 1973 and celebrates the 45th anniversary of the establishment of its Japanese branch this year. The company founded its Japanese subsidiary in Tokyo in 1978 to enhance customer service and opened a development and manufacturing site for test systems for image sensors in Kumamoto Prefecture in 1995. The current number of employees is 60 at the Yokohama headquarters (relocated in 2008) and 120 at the Kumamoto plant.

　Kumamoto Prefecture is home to Teradyne’s only non-US development base. It is where the company’s test systems for image sensors are developed and manufactured and then shipped worldwide. The J/IP750 series, one of its flagship products, reached accumulated sales of 5,000 units in 2016. Manager Motomura emphasized that the development of this flagship series is “only possible at the Kumamoto plant” because both client companies and talented engineers are concentrated in the area.

The Kyushu region in southwestern Japan is also known as Silicon Island, a center for the semiconductor industry. Kumamoto Prefecture in particular is a hub for major semiconductor-related companies, such as the world-leading Sony, Mitsubishi Electric, Renesas Electronics, and Tokyo Electron. A key to this concentration is the abundant groundwater from Mt. Aso, which is critical in the cleaning process of semiconductor manufacturing.

In April 2016, an intensity 7 (magnitude 6.5) earthquake hit Kumamoto and strongly shook the company’s building, collapsing its ceilings and walls and scattering desks and chairs. The damage was beyond restoration. President Takashima looked back at that time saying, “Since it is unthinkable for the company to stop production till restoration, we asked the production base in Suzhou, China to produce testers for image sensors, which had been done in Japan. Our main concern was that the entire development base might be transferred to China in the end. However, our talented engineers have been engaged in the whole process from development, design and manufacturing to marketing in Kumamoto for over 20 years. These ‘human resources’ with such accumulated experience are our most important assets. The corporate headquarters in the US has considered it best to rebuild the Kumamoto base because it is impossible to relocate the development base elsewhere.”

The Kumamoto plant, with 120 employees, has been working on development and manufacturing every day while analyzing global market needs. The US headquarters highly values the base because of its ability to develop highly creative testers. President Takashima stated that it could play a major role in developing testers for new fields. He also expressed enthusiasm for the future prospects of the tester market for semiconductors, saying,

“The market will continue to expand. For example, we see a need for automated vehicles, as well as associated sensors and millimeter wave testers for distance measurement. Smartphone memory will get more complicated, requiring far more sophisticated testers. We see our business expanding.”