INTRODUCTION

ALPS ELECTRIC (UK) Limited was founded in November 1984 as an overseas subsidiary of the radio frequency (RF) division of Alps Electric Co. Ltd, Japan. Its mother factory was in the small town of Soma in North East Japan. It started production of television tuners in a temporary rented factory in August 1985 and moved in 1986 to a permanent custom- built factory on a ten-acre site in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese companies gained global dominance in many market sectors. Large European consumer electronics firms such as Philips, Grundig and Thomson were suffering from an onslaught of cheap, imported Japanese TVs. The European Commission reacted by introducing protective legislation to prevent Japanese companies gaining market share unfairly by the so-called dumping of certain products into the European market at sales prices below their cost of production in Japan.

To reduce their direct imports, the major Japanese TV manufacturers set up assembly plants in Europe and urged their key component suppliers also to establish European plants. As a major electronic components manufacturer and probably the world's largest manufacturer of TV tuners at the time, Alps Electric was among the first of the components manufacturers to transfer some production to the UK.

ALPS ELECTRIC (UK)

The first managing director of Alps Electric (UK) Limited was Ogasawara Shōji, a senior board director and one of the first engineers recruited by President Kataoka Katsutaro when he founded Alps Electric in Tokyo in 1948. He was a vastly experienced manufacturing engineer. Although slight in stature and lacking formal English language skills, he quickly bonded his new team of Japanese and English managers and commanded respect with his own self-effacing style of leadership. He created the company's unique culture that did not tolerate any distinction between office and factory workers and coined the company motto ‘Work hard, study hard, play hard’.

The Japanese managers and engineers whom he brought over to set up the production lines and train the newly recruited UK workforce soon ran into both language and cultural difficulties. Ogasawara knew that I had a Japanese wife and quickly recruited her as a language interpreter and cultural mediator to resolve these cultural misunderstandings. Then, in May 1987, he recruited me into his management team as his business-planning manager.