R&D Policy and Strategy | R&D and Technology | MITSUI CHEMICALS, INC.
To help resolve a variety of social challenges that face us in areas covering the environment, resources, energy, and food. Resolving these challenges will take us a long way towards ensuring the sustainable development of society and improving the health and happiness of people in an aging society.
Quickly Identify and Find Solutions to Diversifying Customer Needs. Create New Customer Value based on Our Materials Proposal Capabilities.
Committed to contributing to society, the Mitsui Chemicals Group works to provide solutions to a variety of social issues in such areas as the global environment, natural resources, energy, and food. These solutions are backed by material and product innovation spearheaded by the Group’s R&D Division. At the same time, the Group strives to ensure its own sustainable development.
In order to achieve its fiscal 2025 operating income target of ¥200 billion, it is vital for Mitsui Chemicals to expand into three growth domains—Mobility, Health Care, and Food & Packaging—while creating new businesses and products for the next generation. To this end, we will pursue customer-driven innovation by engaging in market-driven R&D while working to increase our solutions proposal capabilities aimed at realizing comprehensive value that goes beyond materials-oriented proposals.
In the R&D Division, we will expand ways to pursue customer-driven innovation to achieve growth in targeted business domains and create new businesses and products. The 2025 Long-Term Business Plan will expand resource allocations and double the Company’s R&D expenses to ¥70 billion in fiscal 2025 compared with fiscal 2016.
Open innovation Beyond working to further develop and increase the sophistication of our technologies, we will strategically enhance the technological platforms, including evaluation technologies and design methods, needed to provide solutions.
Rapid prototyping As part of boosting our proposal capabilities for a diverse array of customers, we will enhance systems geared toward the rapid production and proposal of prototypes.
To begin this process, we newly established the Mobility Development Center in April 2017. We will propose solutions to customers focusing on the mobility field through the design and processing evaluation of component parts.
Intelligence function enhancement We will enhance the intelligence functions that enable us to integrate, analyze, and interpret information from both inside and outside the Company in order to quickly identify signs of changes in new markets, leading to new business creation.
Information dissemination capability enhancement We will strengthen the external appeal of the Company’s material and technological capabilities and promote the wide-ranging dissemination of information to customers in untapped fields and new customers in target fields.
We aim to be the company that customers in a wide array of fields turn to first.
Concurrent management of technology and HR We aim to develop creative researchers with far-reaching knowledge and strong technical skills as well as high-level communication skills that will enable them to identify latent customer needs.