Fujiwara Techno-Art Co. - Family Business

I. Executive Summary

This report will examine Fujiwara Techno-Art Co.; a typical Japanese family business majored in supplying production machines and plants for fermented food, healthy food, and biomass products. Over 75 years in business, Fujiwara Techno-Art has established and maintained a culture of strong and reliable relationship between employees and between company and clients, which is also the success key to its current dominant position of domestic market. However, as the domestic market is saturated, in order to continue growing, Fujiwara Techno-Art has to expand its business to overseas markets and new business area, which are occupied by several management issues including the adaptability of the current business model in oversea markets, the need of change in financial strategy, and the disagreement, confliction between old and new generations. Throughout analyzing some alternatives for solving, the report will reach the conclusion and recommendation of the "3 steps" for these issues, which are 1) employing and training of foreign management human resource, 2) opening the shareholding of company to close-business partners and 3) agreement on "continuity" and "change" between old and new generations.

In particular, the report will discuss about following topics:

• Present Strategy (Company, Industry, Market) of Fujiwara Techno-Art

• Status Quo Analysis (Human Resource, Finance, Marketing)

• Issues and Challenges faced by Fujiwara Techno-Art

• Alternatives for solving the issues

• Recommendation and Possible Results

II. Present Strategy

1. Company:

Fujiwara Techno-Art, a typical Japanese family business founded in 1933 in Okayama prefecture by Fujiwara Kenou with an initial small factory of 5 employees only. After over 75 years involving in supplying production machines and plants for fermented food, healthy food, and biomass products, Fujiwara Techno-Art has become the dominating the domestic market, maintaining the annual sales of 2-6 billion yen for over the last 20 years. Fujiwara Techno-Art has been adopting a business inheritance management, entering its fourth generation with Fujiwara Keiko as present chairman. Throughout the generations, the company has developed a culture of close and strong relationship between executives and staffs, and between company and consumers.

2. Industry:

Business segments of Fujiwara Techno-Art can be divided into 3 segments: 1) fermented food production machine and plants, 2) bio-machine and food production machine, 3) healthy food products and biomass, of which fermented