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| Mitsubishi
Corporation is building a large market presence in a surprising
new sector: health care. The company's Human Care Business
Division has become a large source of sales and earnings,
and it is helping to lead the modernization of Japan's
health care industry.
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Lawson outlets in hospitals are a boon to patients.
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Japanese
are famously long-lived. They enjoy the longest life expectancy
of people in any large industrialized nation. Analysts attribute
that robust health more to dietary factors, however, than
to health care. In fact, Japan is still catching up with
its industrialized counterparts in several phases of health
care, such as hospital management, diagnostic services and
patient-friendly infrastructure.
Mitsubishi Corporation's Human Care Business
Division provides a vast range of support for hospitals,
physicians and patients. That support includes furnishing
management consulting and assistance for hospital administration,
marketing medical materials and equipment and supplying
individuals with rental beds, wheelchairs and other items
for temporary health care needs. The company is also active
in using its information networking capabilities to upgrade
the linkage among health care providers and to enhance the
provider-patient interface.
Boardrooms and operating rooms
Changes in attitudes and in regulations
are spurring rapid improvements on the administrative side
of health care services. And Mitsubishi Corporation is in
the vanguard of those improvements.
The Human Care Business Division at Mitsubishi
Corporation lends a helping hand to hospital administrators
in every phase of management. It supervises the introduction
of efficient billing and purchasing systems, patient information
management systems and other internal systems for raising
efficiency. It also helps plan new clinics and hospitals,
and it assists with the relocation of medical facilities.
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A biosensor. Mitsubishi Corporation's Human Care
Business Division markets a diverse range of medical
equipment and materials and also rents health care
items for temporary needs. |
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Networked health care
A wealth of successful experience
in bringing together and coordinating diverse resources
and capabilities is Mitsubishi Corporation's core competence,
and the company puts that competence to work in support
of health care services. For example, the Human Care Business
Division helps vendors of medical equipment and services
identify likely customers. It is preparing to connect retirement
communities, meanwhile, to a full range of services to optimize
the quality of life for residents. Underlying all this activity
are the company's extensive network of business relationships,
its carefully cultivated expertise and its strong brand
name.
Another way that Mitsubishi Corporation reaches
out to hospitals and to their patients is through its network
of Lawson convenience stores. Lawson has opened outlets
at several hospitals in Japan to furnish ready access to
daily essentials.
Life expectancy continues to lengthen in Japan.
Thanks to Mitsubishi Corporation, people are living healthier,
as well as longer.
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| The stubborn
problem of bad loans in Japan's financial sector calls
to mind Mark Twain's famous comment about the weather:
that everyone talks about it but no one does anything
about it. Now, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is doing something
about the problem. |
Bank
of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is the soundest of Japan's large banks
by far. Prudent lending has helped it avoid the worst of
the problems with nonperforming loans that have plagued
Japanese banks. Those problems surfaced when the nation's
economic bubble collapsed more than 10 years ago, and they
have worsened in the absence of substantive countermeasures.
Numerous economists and other observers in Japan
and overseas have called for foreclosing immediately on
insolvent debtors. But most Japanese policy makers and business
executives are unwilling to accept the surge in unemployment
that would result from closing down insolvent companies.
Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is mobilizing the resources
of the Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group, which also includes
Mitsubishi Trust and Mitsubishi Securities, to help weak
companies get back on their feet. It has set up task forces
to work with large companies and with small and medium-sized
companies. The task forces provide management consulting,
introduce potential customers and even mediate infusions
of equity funding from investment funds.
Management at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is committed
to halving the percentage of bad loans in the bank's loan
portfolio by March 31, 2005, compared with its level at
March 31, 2002. Stepped-up assistance for debtors promises
to help the bank achieve that target in a positive manner. |
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Space
Communications Corporation, a Mitsubishi company that owns
and operates communications satellites, is lending a wireless
hand to Boeing. It will make available transponders on its
satellites to support the Internet service that Boeing is
readying for airliners. Space Communications will handle
communications for the service, to be called Connexion by
Boeing, in the Asia-Pacific region.
Connexion by Boeing is presently available on
a limited range of flights. It will go into full-scale service
around the world in spring 2004, starting with trans-Atlantic
and Asia-Europe routes.
Space Communications will provide three kinds
of support. One, it will lease transponders on the SUPERBIRD-C
satellite. Two, it will provide gateway services through
its Ibaraki teleport center, near Tokyo. And three, it will
furnish gateway-related operational and monitoring support.
Gateway services consist of maintaining terrestrial linkage
with the Internet and relaying Internet data streams to
and from airliners through satellite transponders. Space
Communications' gateway in Japan will complement gateways
to be established in the United States and in Switzerland.
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You're online when you're in the air. |
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Sit back and enjoy the flight
Connexion by Boeing will provide
airline passengers with all the benefits of realtime Internet
connectivity. The passengers will be able to browse the
World Wide Web, send and receive e-mail and enjoy streaming
entertainment, including movies and music. Equally important,
airlines will be able to monitor aircraft performance through
the system, which will enhance safety.
Mitsubishi Electric, meanwhile, is a core contractor
for Connexion by Boeing equipment. That Mitsubishi company
will supply antennas for installation on the aircraft. |
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Your gasoline purchases will earn you time with
Lara Croft. |
Nippon
Oil, a Mitsubishi company that is Japan's largest oil refiner
and gasoline retailer, has begun an interesting collaboration
with the nation's largest operator of rental video outlets.
Registered customers of the video rental chain can earn
bonus points through purchases at Nippon Oil's ENEOS gasoline
stations. The customers can use accumulated points to offset
charges for video rentals.
TSUTAYA, the video rental chain, comprises more
than 1,000 outlets in Japan, and it has some 18 million
members. So this tie-up increases the customer-drawing power
of Nippon Oil's gasoline stations greatly. The chain's owner,
Culture Convenience Club, signed the agreement with Nippon
Oil in March, and its members began accumulating points
at gasoline stations in October. They can begin redeeming
their points in April 2004. |
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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is contributing
to some exciting work under way at the public-sector Japan
Marine Science Technology Center. Most recently, the company
has provided the center with core technology for the world's
first fuel cell-powered underwater vehicle. |
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The Urashima is the world's first fuel cell-powered
underwater vehicle. |
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The
Japan Marine Science and Technology Center conducted the
inaugural voyage of its fuel cell-powered underwater vehicle
on August 12. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries built the fuel
cell for the craft, an unmanned vessel about 10 meters long,
under contract from the center. The little craft traveled
2.5 kilometers at a depth that reached 300 meters in its
initial plunge into the sea. Its fuel cell is a sealed solid
polymer unit developed especially for the underwater vehicle.
The vessel's developers have designed it to
plunge to depths as great as 3,500 meters beneath the surface.
They have equipped the underwater vehicle to attain a maximum
speed of about four knots and to be able to maintain a cruising
speed of about three knots.
People at the Japan Marine Science Technology
Center have christened their craft Urashima, after a Rip
Van Winkle character in a Japanese fairy tale. Unlike sleepy
Rip, Urashima passed away the decades during what he thought
was a brief sojourn in an undersea palace. |
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NYK
Line's Nippon Airship subsidiary is preparing to
put airships similar to this one into service in
the skies over Japan. |
NYK
Line, the original Mitsubishi company and a world leader
in shipping and logistics, is taking to the air--in lighter-than-air
craft. The company has purchased a controlling, 62.5% stake
in a Japanese venture that is preparing to offer publicity
and excursion services with airships.
Actually, NYK Line has been flying for years
through an equity holding in a large cargo carrier and through
its wholly owned air freight forwarding service. But this
is the company's first ascent in airships.
NYK Line's newly acquired subsidiary is Nippon
Airship Corporation, which was established last year in
Nagoya. The venture's business plan calls for inaugurating
service in time for the Aichi Expo, which will take place
in and around Nagoya in 2005.
Nippon Airship's initial craft will be small,
and it will be mainly for displaying advertising messages
and carrying a limited number of sightseeing passengers.
But management at NYK Line is considering the possibility
of operating larger craft. The investment in Nippon Airship
is an opportunity to study that potential carefully. |
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Kirin
Brewery, a Mitsubishi company and heir to Japan's oldest
brewing tradition, also serves up fine wine. The brewer
is active in importing wine from several nations to market
in Japan. That includes taking part in the annual fun of
speeding the year's Beaujolais Nouveau into the hands of
Japanese wine lovers.
French friend
The source of Kirin's entry in
Japan's Beaujolais Nouveau is the French winery Pierre Andre.
A well-respected presence in French wine circles, Pierre
Andre supplies Kirin with two excellent Beaujolais wines:
a Beaujolais Nouveau and a Beaujolais Nouveau Villages.
It also furnishes Kirin with the delectable chardonnay,
Macon Villages Nouveau.
France's producers of Beaujolais Nouveau honor
an embargo on shipments of the young wine until the third
Thursday of November. Cargo jets stand by on the tarmac
to carry the first cases of the eagerly awaited wine to
connoisseurs worldwide.
The arrival of the first Beaujolais Nouveau
has become an especially big event in Japan in recent years.
Per capita wine consumption in Japan remains much lower
than in other industrialized nations. But it is growing
rapidly as Kirin and other importers introduce consumers
to the joys of the vine. |
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| Aiming
to keep a step ahead of ever-tightening emissions regulations,
Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus has teamed with DaimlerChrysler
and Michigan-based Detroit Diesel to create a new generation
of cleaner-operating diesel engines. The partners will develop
engines for large trucks and buses that are manufactured
and sold by Mitsubishi Fuso and by DaimlerChrysler. |
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| Mitsubishi
Fuso is considering a tie-up with the Chinese truck manufacturer
Anhui Xingma Automobile Co. in cooperation Mitsubishi Corporation.
The Chinese company already has begun assembling trucks
of capacity larger than 10 metric tons with knockdown kits
supplied by Mitsubishi Fuso. Management at both companies
are mulling a joint venture but have not reached a final
decision. |
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| Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries has received orders to deliver and install
large geothermal generating plants in Iceland and in New
Zealand. The company is a leader in geothermal plants, which
tap underground steam to drive electrical generator turbines. |
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| Mitsubishi
Estate will light up Tokyo's Marunouchi business district
again this Christmas. The company's spectacular lighting
displays drew crowds all through the Christmas season last
year. |
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Mitsubishi
Corporation is good for what ails you
