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When things are going right, the small things are easy to ignore. Not so when supply chains are stressed — the essential becomes magnified, no matter how tiny.
That’s what happened with Murata, who in 1973 became one of the earliest Japanese investors in Georgia, setting up a plant to make capacitors in car radios. The Kyoto-based company, now with global annual revenues of approximately $17 Trillion yen, holds about 40 percent of the world’s market share for capacitors, small ceramic parts produced by the trillions each year to store and release power within electronic devices.
When a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast in 2011 and an earthquake shook the country, electronics supply chains were scrambled. Everything, from cell phones and digital cameras to appliances and EVs, relies in some way on Murata’s parts — more than 1,000 go into a typical smartphone and potentially 30,000+ slated for a fully autonomous electric vehicle.
Murata had already been diversifying its sourcing around the world, including in Southeast Asia, to be closer to end customers. It also deepened research spending to ensure it could serve advanced industries, like increasingly computerized cars, with innovative solutions. That blend of diversification and R&D continues today. Murata Electronics North America, meanwhile, has a new headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., and maintains a distribution center in Rockmart, Ga.
Today, an uncertain global trade landscape threatens to inflict another shock to supply chains around the world. Join GSU-CIBER and Global Atlanta to hear from Murata Electronics North America’s CEO, David Kirk, on how the company is dealing with increasing volatility in high-value industries where the smallest parts can make the biggest impact.
Key takeaways:
-How Murata has diversified its manufacturing locations around the world in partnership with customers and what that has meant for the company’s U.S. operations
-Murata’s approach to continuous improvement in research and development, its moves up the value chain over the last 50 years, and efforts to showcase innovation in relatable ways like robots and other consumer-facing items
-The company’s approach to trade uncertainty and supply chain volatility and how the company balances its Japanese sensibilities, including long-term strategy, with a nimble approach in global markets