DuPont today announced the expansion of the DuPont Automotive Center (DAC) in Nagoya and renamed it the DuPont Japan Innovation Center. The expansion and renaming reflects the substantially broader capability of the center to include other industries with remaining focus on the automotive industry.
With the broadened approach, the DuPont Japan Innovation Center will create opportunity and space to display industry specific innovations, latest technology offerings and industry trends to stimulate customer dialogues. By working with local partners and connecting them through real-time video technology with the company’s global network of 9,500 scientists, chemists and engineers working in over 150 research and development centers around the world, the center will create a rich exchange of new ideas and an inclusive atmosphere that will lead to faster innovative solutions.
“We appreciate the needs and challenges facing our customers in targeted industries across Japan and are looking forward to collaborating with them to develop new and innovative solutions with this encompassing approach,” said Minoru Amoh, president of DuPont Kabushiki Kaisha (DKK).
The center in Nagoya has been serving customers in the automotive industry since 2005. The objective was to better serve the automotive industry and create new business through collaboration with key industry participants. In the past six years, DAC hosted more than 9,400 visitors and generated almost 370 new product innovations for automotive customers.
“Our center in Nagoya has been very successful in serving our automotive customers, as well as customers in all of our industries. This center served as a model that we extended around the world. It provides an interactive place for our scientists and customers to create innovative solutions that meet the needs of industry,” said Thomas M. Connelly, executive vice president and chief innovation officer.
Last year, DuPont installed state-of-the-art audio and video communication technology to connect the company’s global technology resources live in customer meetings in Nagoya, making DuPont’s global technology resources instantly accessible to customers and partners in Japan. Customers saw great value and their feedback included benefits from the collaborative, inclusive nature of working with DuPont on science-based innovation projects that addressed real performance problems that they were having with existing materials and that collaborations with DKK produced faster and sustainable new product solutions.
Learning from the automotive center’s success, DuPont developed the concept of an innovation center with a broadened focus beyond the automotive industry to multiple industries, such as agriculture, food, packaging, electronic materials, alternative energy including solar and industrial biosciences. DuPont has seven Innovation Centers around the world, with five in Asia and two in Latin America. The company plans to expand the concept around the world to collaborate more closely with customers and partners.
“It has been exciting to see the progress and development that took place in DAC in the past six and a half years. Our customers have globalized in order to meet local demands and needs. With the connection of the Japan Innovation Center to the global network of innovation centers, we are committed to developing diversified global solutions through collaboration with them,” said Amoh.
DuPont has been bringing world-class science and engineering to the global marketplace in the form of innovative products, materials, and services since 1802. The company believes that by collaborating with customers, governments, NGOs, and thought leaders we can help find solutions to such global challenges as providing enough healthy food for people everywhere, decreasing dependence on fossil fuels, and protecting life and the environment.