Aerospace Company

As one of Japan's leading aerospace manufacturers, Kawasaki develops and manufactures various aircraft for the Japan Ministry of Defense, such as the P-1 marine patrol aircraft and the next-generation XC-2 transport aircraft, and participates in international development projects for commercial airplanes such as the Boeing 787. Kawasaki is also known as the leading Japanese manufacturer of helicopters, with the top selling BK117 helicopters. Additionally, Kawasaki also provides space products including payload fairing for the H-IIA and H-IIB rockets.

Purpose of existence and value for society of aircraft

The most important value of our products, airplanes and helicopters, is "to be rapid and secure transportation". These products always play critical role in emergency scene such as disaster relief, and are indispensable from the national defense point of view. I believe these are important tools which contribute to our society and protect our homeland.
Design and manufacturing are two pillars of our Aerospace Company. In our Gifu Works, we design, manufacture, and fly our final products including various aircraft for the Ministry of Defense and the BK117 helicopters, and in our Nagoya Works, we efficiently operate high-rate production system for major components of wide-body commercial airplanes with cutting-edge production equipment.
I will keep my emphasis on passing our expertise and experiences in design and manufacturing to the next generation of our employees, which allows them to keep delivering final products with excellence in quality, cost, and delivery as one of leading aircraft manufacturers.

Current and future high priority tasks

I was enthusiastic about making plastic models of aircraft during my junior high school life. I think that was because I was fascinated by the functional beauty of aircraft. I majored in the aeronautical engineering in my university and, after my graduation, joined the Aerospace Company (then called Aerospace Division) of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. Since then, I have been continuously engaged in the aerospace business. In recent years, our Aerospace Company has been developing and manufacturing the P-1 maritime patrol aircraft and the next-generation XC-2 transport aircraft in parallel. We are proud of achieving these projects and, one of my high priority tasks as the president of our Company is to successfully complete these two projects. Development of the P-1 has already been completed and the project is now in the mass-production stage. Now, we are focusing on the completion of the XC-2 development so that "the next generation" and "X" will be taken out from "the next-generation XC-2" during the fiscal year 2016.
Since domestic and international joint development projects are expected to be significant trends, we will take necessary actions such as establishing internal organization and investing in adequate facilities. We will build our component assembly production line for the Boeing aircraft in Lincoln, Nebraska of U.S.A. At the same time, it is important for us to pursue another opportunities of aircraft development projects to maintain and strengthen our skills. As we have carried out the said two large-scale aircraft projects for the Ministry of Defense and the Boeing 787 project, we have a large number of highly skilled workers. For the purpose of enhancing our skills, I will lead our Company as the president to develop the derivatives of these aircraft and to be able to participate in new development projects for future Boeing aircraft.

What I expect of our employees

I would like our employees not to look inward but to go out to see the outside world and communicate with different people to expand the area in which our Company can contribute. Additionally, while our Company has a limited number of women in the design and manufacturing sections, I expect much from women's sense and really want women to play active roles in our Company.
The other day, I spoke to our new employees that; "Knowing nothing is a kind of privilege for you now and you can ask anything for the first three years or so". Building up accurate knowledge is just the starting point, and it is important to convert knowledge into intelligence, and then finally make movements by using such intelligence combined with your “heart”, just like our predecessors who brought up the aerospace business for our Company to today’s scale. I hope our employees put their “heart” into their work, not just following manual books.