Just 18 months after being appointed President of the Seiko-Epson Corporation, Yasunori Ogawa has visited Sydney to help Epson Australia celebrate its 40th anniversary, and to share his vision for the future of the company with the Australian team and the wider industry.
It’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always possible to print off high quality photos on your home printer. Or that business presentations were done without the aid of compact business projectors. The technologies which have made these things possible were driven by Epson innovation, and Yasunori Ogawa was there to witness these, and many more innovations, first-hand.
His career with Epson started in 1988 and, in the ensuing 36 years, he has worked on everything from fax machines, to projectors, visual products, R&D and manufacturing, wearables and industrial products.
That innovation continues today, but with fresh purpose and clarity under the leadership of Mr Ogawa, who is committed to driving an open-minded corporate culture that understands and responds to the challenges facing its clients across its many business areas.
Since taking the reins as Global President, he has undertaken a global tour visiting Epson representatives in every corner of the world. It was, he says, his intent to make Australia one of his first visits but, given the Australian operation’s 40th anniversary this year, it made sense to make it his last stop to coincide with celebrations.
Sustainability is the way of the future
Yasunori Ogawa comes across as a warm, personable leader, who answers questions thoughtfully, reflects with evident pride on Epson’s revolutionary innovations over the years, and communicates a genuine passion and excitement when speaking about the company and its plans for the future.
Chief among those plans is an overarching priority to drive sustainability across all areas of the business, not just to enable Epson customers to reduce their environmental impact through what he describes as more ‘efficient, compact and precise’ print solutions, but by reimagining the way in which they source, and manufacture, even the smallest components of their equipment.
Alongside Europe, Mr Ogawa says Australia leads the world in demand for sustainable solutions, making this a hot topic for customers in the region.
“For end users, that means we are working towards phasing out ink cartridges in favour of EcoTank technologies, and are shifting focus from laser printers to inkjet technologies which significantly reduce energy consumption,” he says.
“For Epson itself, we have a wide-ranging set of strategies and innovations to address these important issues, including finding alternative materials from which to manufacture machine components.
“The aim within the next four to five years is to replace many plastic components with a hard, plastic-like material which we are able to produce using our Paper Lab dry paper making technology, which was originally developed to recycle waste paper into new in office environments.”
Metal products, too, are in the company’s cross-hairs, with the company keen to become ‘underground resource free’.
“Here, too, we have programs underway and set to deliver within a five-year window, including an initiative to melt down and recycle waste from our manufacture of silicon wafers to use as a base material for some applications,” Mr Ogawa explains.
“Other components, we believe, will be able to be manufactured using the amorphous alloy powders manufactured by another of our Japanese companies, Epson Atmix.”
New developments focus on precision
Before then – within the next two to three years – Mr Ogawa says the market can expect to see a number of advances from Epson.
“Chief among these will be developments will be expanding the application for our Epson printhead,” he explains. “Until now, of course, they have been mainly used to print to paper and fabric but we are now thinking of expanding that. One area that we have already started is printing the wiring of LCD and OLED panels, and we are also working on printing to PCBs and flexible cables.”
For all applications, precision is key, and Mr Ogawa says improving this precision will continue to be a primary focus for the company’s R&D operation as it moves into the future.
“At the moment, we have what we call a line-head inkjet printer, which is a sequence of print heads; our aim is to make these even more precise in future while reducing the cost and increasing our sales of those across multiple applications.
“With our EcoTank technology, too, we are making components more compact, to use fewer materials in its manufacture, and utilising more recycled content.
“At the same time, we are improving performance and precision for more accurate, precise and beautiful results, at faster speeds, and to increase longevity so people can use their equipment for even longer – again, this will increase overall sustainability.”
Agility is also a priority
As for the future, Ogawa says to expect plenty of advances at drupa and in the coming months and years, in areas including Direct to Garment (DTG), Direct to Fabric (DTF) and UV desktop models, a continuation of the trend to replacing analogue technologies with digital inkjet to enable businesses not only to handle print runs of any length more easily and profitably, but react more quickly and flexibly to market demand.
“Our priority is not only sustainability but also agility,” Mr Ogawa says.
“We think that companies who use our products will be able to open up new revenue streams, whether that be in fabrics or labels, photos or posters, large-format or business applications.
“As we have always done, we divide our market and play to our strengths, to ensure we can continue our development of innovative, high-end products tailored to meet the exact needs of each market sector,” he says.
“In professional print products, that means more efficient, compact and precise solutions that will deliver even higher quality, more perfect output for our customers, and do so more sustainably.”
Caption:
Epson Australia MD Craig Heckenberg and President of the Seiko-Epson Corporation, Yasunori Ogawa
To learn more about Epson Australia visit www.epson.com.au
