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EPTE Newsletter: Many Plants in Japan Shut Down After Earthquake

Silicon Valley is a nickname for some Bay Area cities that were home to various high-tech semiconductor companies. Kyushu, the southwestern most of Japan’s main islands was called Silicon Island during 1980s and 1990s because many Japanese electronics companies built their semiconductor plants on the island.

A magnitude 6.5 earthquake shook the Kumamoto Prefecture on April 14, 2016 with the highest intensity of seven killing 11 people. Typically aftershocks follow an earthquake, and after a few rumblings, everyone thought the worst was over. They were wrong. On April 16, an even larger earthquake rumbled through measuring at an even bigger 7.3 magnitude. Unfortunately, 37 deaths were reported along with more than thousand of injuries, and few more remain missing. Hundreds of thousands returned to damaged homes and remain homeless, and the nightmare continues – more than 850 aftershocks have been registered after the earthquake.   

All modes of transportation remain closed. Railways, bullet trains, highways and air flights are canceled, and all utilities—electricity, water, and gas and telephone land lines—are unavailable. Fortunately, relief efforts arrived quickly, and over the last few days things are quickly coming back on line. More than ten thousand volunteers arrived to help with the evacuation and set up temporary shelter.

Large manufacturing companies including Sony, Panasonic, Honda and Toyota suspended operations citing damage at their plants. The supply chain disruptions could keep them idle for a up to a week. Toyota Motors was the hardest hit amongst the large corporations. The company is experiencing a parts shortage and will suspend production on a number of its vehicle assembly lines throughout Japan. Many business analysts blame the Just In Time system (JIT), created by Japanese automobile companies, for this shutdown. They claim the JIT system is extremely efficient, but when a natural disaster strikes the system fails.

I don’t agree with the analysts’ conclusions about the JIT system. Any manufacturing plant in the area was forced to suspend operations even if they did not receive direct damage from the earthquake. Damaged railways and highways remain closed more than 10 days after the earthquake, and supply chain disruptions are affecting all manufacturing.

Automobile manufacturers will probably be on line before any of the others that do not use the JIT system. They established alternative distribution sources in different locations throughout Japan having learned from other natural disasters in the past. The automobile manufacturers could open their plants in the next week to ten days. 

The Golden Week, 10-day vacation will starts Friday, April 29 this year in Japan. Probably, over one hundred thousand volunteers will visit Kumamoto Area during the week to help the people evacuated from their home, cancelling their vacations.

Headlines of the week

(Please contact haverhill@dknreseach.com for further information of the news.)

1. Mitsubishi Electric (Major electric and electronics company in Japan) 4/6

Has developed a new power module series introducing common package for the power semiconductor devices.

2. Fujitsu Semiconductor (Major semiconductor manufacturer in Japan) 4/7

Has started the sample supply of the new 64 kbit FRAM, “MB85RC64T” with the smallest energy consumption. A small size SON package is available.

3. Denso (Major device manufacturer in Japan) 4/8

Has developed a new reliable drone for the inspection of roads and bridges. It works safely under bad weather.

4. Hitachi Metal (Major metallic material supplier in Japan) 4/11

Has developed a new ferrite core material “ML29D” with a smaller loss in broad range temperature for automobile applications.

5. Fukuoka Institute of Technology (Technical college in Japan) 4/12

Has developed a small scale hydroelectric power generator utilizing fluttering of the boards in mild water stream.

6. Ajinomoto (Major semiconductor packaging material supplier in Japan) 4/13

Has founded a new research company Ajinomoto Fine Techno USA in Silicon Valley for the market research of electronic material business.

7. Denso (Major device manufacturer in Japan) 4/19

Will commercialize a new thin heat flow sensor “RAFESPA” with high sensitivity built by PALAP process for automobiles.

8. Sekisui Chemical (Major material manufacturer in Japan) 4/19

Will start the field test of pyroelectric power generation devices built on carbon nano tube material. The devices could be very thin and flexible.

9. Sumitomo Chemical (Major chemical company in Japan) 4/18

Has agreed to co-develop next generation multiple biosensor devices introducing printable electronics with English company Abingdon Health.

10. Tokyo University (Japan) 4/18

Has developed extremely flexible thin OLED. (

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Please contact haverhill@dknreseach.com for further information on the news included here.