Who owns fuji xerox

Acquires Nippon Carbide Industries Company's chemical toner business and establishes new plant in Toyama. Achieves resource recycling rate of Xworks Co. Expands manufacturing in Shanghai to provide the global market with digital copy and multifunction devices. Throughout its year history, it has provided office related products and solutions to increase productivity and has grown into a company with revenues exceeding 1 trillion yen.

It is also known as one of the most successful cross-border joint ventures between Japanese and non-Japanese companies. Fuji Xerox operates in the Asia-Pacific market and has a strong customer base for large corporations and government offices. In addition, it has achieved a unique position in the document industry by leveraging excellent product development capabilities and manufacturing technology.

In light of the fact that uncertainty about the future of the global economy is increasing and competition in the market is intensifying, Fujifilm has decided it is best to have Fuji Xerox as a wholly owned subsidiary to flexibly implement necessary measures in a timely manner in order to achieve further growth.

Strengthen Document Solutions business — While it will continue to supply its products to Xerox under an existing agreement, Fuji Xerox will also strengthen its Document Solutions business in several ways.

Most important, Fuji Xerox will have expanded OEM opportunities and supply products such as printer engines to customers worldwide, including the U. Fuji Xerox will be ideally positioned to build on its increasingly sophisticated technology including expertise relating to cloud, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, accelerating further expansion into adjacent areas.

Capitalize on new product opportunities — Enhanced synergies will bring new opportunities in growth industries. In the printing industry, Fujifilm and Fuji Xerox will be better positioned to facilitate digitalization, offering one-stop solutions from analog to digital. Realize significant cost synergies — With full ownership of Fuji Xerox, Fujifilm will realize cost synergies from integration of duplicate functions, procurement optimization and infrastructure sharing within the Fujifilm Group.

Fujifilm has continued to grow by building a powerful business platform in diverse businesses including healthcare and highly functional materials and documents, as well as by achieving business portfolio transformation in existing businesses such as photography and digital cameras by taking rapid and appropriate responses to sudden changes in market environments. Then, acceding to the demands of American unions, Fuji Xerox exported them as knock-down units kits of parts to be assembled at Xerox.

The Fuji Xerox exports to Xerox helped stem the advance of the competition, but they did not change how Xerox developed, manufactured and marketed its own products. Fuji Xerox's quality control program, however, eventually served as a model for Xerox that led to deep changes in these areas as well.

Xerox acquired management ideas, subcontracting approaches, product development techniques and competitive data from Fuji Xerox. Through this reverse flow of technology, Fuji Xerox helped Xerox get back on its feet. The Xerox turnaround can be traced to about , when Mr. Kearns took a close look at the strategies and products of Fuji Xerox and other Japanese companies.

Xerox engineers were amazed by the Fuji Xerox reject rate for parts, which was a fraction of the American rate, and by the substantially lower manufacturing costs at the joint venture. Visits to Fuji Xerox facilities introduced Xerox executives to the practice of "benchmarking," which systematically tracked costs and performance in all areas of operations against those of the best in the field.

Xerox's own benchmarking studies helped fuel Mr. Kearns's efforts to infuse his organization with new vision and determination. In , Mr. Kearns announced a company-wide initiative for "business effectiveness," and two years later he formally launched the Leadership Through Quality program, based partly on the experience of Fuji Xerox.

Throughout the effort, Mr. Kobayashi and others at Fuji Xerox were called on for help. Xerox hired Japanese consultants recommended by Fuji Xerox, and some high-level Xerox and Rank Xerox managers visited Fuji Xerox in later years to learn directly about its quality management program. The rallying point for the Xerox quality movement was the development of the 10 Series, a new family of copiers.

Dubbed the "Marathon" family, this became the most successful line of copiers in Xerox history and served to restore the company's finances and morale. Altogether, 14 models were introduced between and , six of which were still sold in Fuji Xerox designed and produced the low-end models in the series -- the , and , the latter drawing on basic technologies from the FX, the first machine that Fuji Xerox developed internally.

Because Xerox's Japanese competitors were not strong in mid-volume copiers at the time, the 10 Series forestalled their move into that segment of the market and helped Xerox win back market share.

On the strength of the 10 Series, Xerox regained 2 to 3 percentage points of market share in , and 12 points in By the end of , more than , of the new machines had been rented or sold, accounting for nearly 38 percent of Xerox's worldwide installed base. Xerox continued throughout the 's to change the way it did business. Taking another leaf from the Fuji Xerox book, the company reduced its supplier base, bringing the cost of purchased parts down by 45 percent.

Average manufacturing costs at Xerox were reduced by 20 percent and the time-to-market for new products was cut by 60 percent. Fuji Xerox continued to grow and mature through the 's. Its dollar revenues grew faster than Xerox's, and by the end of the decade represented a more significant portion of the Xerox group's worldwide revenues than ever before.

Fuji Xerox's financial contribution to Xerox's net earnings in the form of royalties and profits had also grown sharply -- from 5 percent in to 22 percent in And throughout the decade, Fuji Xerox had been an important source of low-end copiers for Xerox. The technological capabilities of Fuji Xerox continued to broaden and deepen in the 80's. Fuji Xerox's increased technological strength is partly reflected in the technology fees it received from Xerox for designs it supplied to Xerox. These fees were introduced when the technology agreements between Xerox and Fuji Xerox were renegotiated in The new agreement also called for a gradual decline in Fuji Xerox royalty payments to Xerox, in anticipation of a declining value of xerography.

Another measure of the growing capability of Fuji Xerox was the proportion of models developed in-house. In the 70's, the majority of models sold by Fuji Xerox had been developed by Xerox. Although Fuji Xerox continued to rely on Xerox for basic research in new technologies, by the late 80's few of its models were designed by Xerox. For the most part, these were high-end copier models, working at speeds of above c.

By the late 80's, Fuji Xerox had produced many low-end models, and even a few in the c. In , 30 percent of the low-volume units sold by Xerox and Rank Xerox were of Fuji Xerox design; by , that figure was 94 percent. Xerox and Rank Xerox continued to design and make their own mid- and high-volume copiers, however. By the 90's, Xerox and Fuji Xerox faced new competitive challenges and were determined to meet them together.

One challenge was the rising capabilities of Canon. Although Xerox's precipitous decline in the 70's had been stemmed and many of its competitors from that decade had faded away, Canon's copier business continued to expand.

Canon's R. By , Canon was no longer primarily a camera company -- 40 percent of its revenues came from copiers, and 20 percent from laser printers. In the second half of the 80's, Canon developed a dominating presence in the low-end laser printers that were becoming ubiquitous companions to microcomputers. Laser-printing technology was closely related to plain-paper copying technology, and as digital copying systems were introduced, the importance of laser printing in the copier market was bound to increase.

Canon's laser-printing engines were the core of the highly successful Hewlett-Packard Laserprinter series, which accounted for about 50 percent of laser printer sales in the United States. This original equipment manufacturer, or O. In the rest of the world, Canon sold printers under its own name.

In copiers, Canon was strong in the low end of the market, and the company had recently developed a growing business in color copiers, where it held 50 percent of the market by A significant portion of this growth was projected to come from Xerox's heartland of high- and mid-volume copiers and printers. Xerox, however, was determined to be aggressive in its response. The company's strategists now saw the relationship between Xerox and Fuji Xerox as a critical element in competing worldwide against Canon.

Canon had a strong presence in all major world markets, as did the Xerox companies. But Paul Allaire highlighted a major difference in the two companies' global networks: "When we negotiate with Fuji Xerox, we can't just represent ourselves.

We need to find what is fair and equitable to essentially three partners. Canon is percent owned by one company. Tony Kobayashi saw the difference between Canon and Fuji Xerox in this way: "We often compare our situation with that of Canon or Ricoh, companies that have a single management organization in Japan. Are we as efficient and effective in the worldwide management of our business as we could be? In addition to this potential scale advantage in manufacturing, Canon appeared to gain from its centralized research.

In the late 80's, therefore, the Xerox partners began to work more closely together. In research, they launched their first joint projects, in which they agreed on "lead" and "support" roles and eliminated overlapping activities. Research collaboration between the companies was reinforced by exchanges of personnel and by an evolving communication process. Personnel from Fuji Xerox spent time as residents at Xerox, and engineers from both companies frequently crossed the Pacific to provide on-the-spot assistance.

These personnel exchanges were also an important channel for the transfer of technology between the companies. Efforts were also made to intensify cooperation in product development, manufacturing and planning. Kennard, the Xerox director of Fuji Xerox relations, and William Glavin, vice chairman of Xerox, worked together to launch "strategy summits. The personnel exchanges and summit meetings contributed to a constructive relationship.

Kennard explained. It enables one to take on short-term costs in the interest of long-term gains for the group. In the context of the recognized need for closer collaboration, Mr. Allaire and Mr. Kobayashi commissioned a "Co-destiny Task Force," charged with developing a framework for cooperation between the two companies for the 90's. One of the issues addressed by the team was how the Xerox group should manage the low-end laser printer business in the United States.

Most laser printers were assembled by O. These terminals were the hardware innards of the printer, that is, the drum, photoreceptor, laser and paper-handling mechanism. Dependence on O. You need to sell it before you have it, and price it before you know what it costs. Bill Lowe, Xerox's executive vice president for development and manufacturing in , recalled how Xerox and Fuji Xerox failed to work together effectively in this business.

Furthermore, each product had a different markup scheme, and many sideline deals confounded the issues. This fostered sharp dealings between the partners. So, most of our energy was focused on each other, not on Canon. We were pointing fingers and frustrating ourselves. Ultimately, however, Xerox and Fuji Xerox devised a creative response to the challenge of selling low-volume laser printers in the United States.

In , they established Xerox International Partners X. Xerox holds a 51 percent stake in X. The venture was licensed to sell in Xerox territory via certain specific O. Executives from Xerox and Fuji Xerox felt that this new alliance gave them a better chance at competing in a tough market. They traced their earlier difficulties in that market, in part, to the lack of an appropriate organization for the business. Although Xerox had an existing O.

Fuji Xerox sold to Japanese O. The new alliance would give Fuji Xerox more direct contact with customers in the United States and align the two companies behind a common business strategy for this specialty market. Perhaps because of the need to get the "right" structure for the alliance, it took the companies a year to negotiate the X. From the beginning, the aim was a structure that would create incentives for collaboration. Marcus, who was the Xerox executive in charge of these negotiations, stated his philosophy: "I am not a believer in management, but rather in organization.

An agreement needs to be self-policing. We spent our time going through all the 'what if' questions. We took the agreement apart and put it back together. Because of this searching, things should be pretty smooth. Throughout all these arguments, we maintained a long-term vision. Toshio Arima, chief negotiator for Fuji Xerox, agreed with this assessment. Among other things, the new arrangement aimed to alleviate friction over how profits from the business would be shared.

The joint ownership of X. In addition, the negotiators practiced "mathematical gymnastics to create a seamless company with all the right incentives to succeed," Mr. Marcus explained. The seamless company reached all the way to Japan, where Fuji Xerox created a separate unit for the low-end printer business.

This unit transferred products to X. The agreement also set the ratio at which profits from the whole business would be shared between Xerox and Fuji Xerox; the level of transfer prices would not affect this ratio. The new arrangement also helped Fuji Xerox upgrade its capabilities more rapidly.

Today, we can take on Canon because of the discipline we learned from the U. To fill these needs, Fuji Xerox completely changed the way it designed and built laser printer engines. It created a business unit dedicated to the development of I. Even more important were the changes in management.

Fuji Xerox engineers were involved, for the first time, in direct discussions with O. Marcus described other changes: "They made a huge commitment to turn things around.

They changed suppliers, inventory management practices, design processes, sourcing and so on. You name it, they changed it -- everything in the food chain. The organizational learning was tremendous. The changes at Fuji Xerox paid off. Between and , the company developed and marketed three generations of printer engines, each one better and more cost-effective than the previous one.

Xerox managers estimate that, in , the Fuji Xerox I. Their offering, however, was fully up to par technically, and almost at the benchmark level in terms of production cost.