CTO Message

Our company was founded in 1948, and supplied rotary switches as our initial product. In the 75 years from then until today, we have continued moving forward together with our customers in regards to the evolution of electronic devices and automobiles. With the three business segments of components, sensor and communication, and mobility as our pillars, we have developed a great deal of core technologies, including mechatronics design, magnetism, high frequencies, electrostatic, acoustics, IC design, and software technologies.

The business environment around us is undergoing rapid change, influenced by environmental issues growing in severity year after year, in addition to value chains being reorganized with increasing speed in line with expanding geopolitical risks. The Company is required to continually respond to these changes by generating new added value providing excitement, safety, and environmental friendliness, armed with our core technologies in both hardware and software.

We think of our technologies as something our customers can use to make their dreams of “I wish we were able to do that!” come true. In order for us to respond to the constantly changing wishes of our customers, we are pushing forward with reforms to our engineering capabilities while actively strengthening cooperation with external organizations both in Japan and overseas. And in the field of research and development, we are focusing our efforts on the acquisition of technological development capabilities that will lead to innovations which will still be commonplace even after 10 or 20 years, and developing human resources who have the ability to think of social issues as technological issues by furthering collaborations with five universities, including Tohoku University, with which we have a comprehensive cooperation agreement and have established a joint research facility.

In component products, we believe it will be necessary to establish a technology system that is backed by theory regarding the unique characteristics of the products that we have evolved through our experience and know-how. For example, our company’s representative-like product, the TACT Switch™, features a tactile feel that we determine through three parameters: operation force, click rate, and stroke. We can control these parameters through three constituent components that are called the combination housing, metal dome, and stem. However, we used to have a problem with the development cycle taking a long time regardless of what we tried, because there was no other way to check the tactile feel of a product but to create and test an actual sample. We needed to conduct trial manufacturing repeatedly to finally arrive at the feel that our customers truly wanted in a product.
To tackle the issue of, “Is there any way we can check the feel without creating a sample, thereby contributing to shortening our customers’ lead time?” we launched kansei engineering development several years ago, and one of the proposals in that initiative was the development of a simulator with a force display based on kansei engineering. It successfully converts various tactile feels requested by our customers into numerical values without the need for producing a sample. This made it possible for us to contribute to shortening our customers’ lead times for development.

In the field of sensor and communication, we are expanding the deployment of our products in the automotive industry through refining radio wave and magnetism technologies, both of which are positioned as core technologies for our company.
Our Millimeter-Wave Sensors are used for purposes such as motion detection, driver and passenger detection, and the detection of obstacles in the surrounding area. In magnetism, small-sized high sensitivity sensors for electronic vehicles that make use of gigantic magnetoresistance (GMR) type sensors are one example of our products. In order to draw out the maximum performance from these sensors, it is critical to join them together with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC).
Our company has been in possession of design functions for analog and digital IC for the past 20 years, and our engineers who are well-versed in the specifics of sensors and market needs have the capability to realize our proprietary ASIC design.
We are supplying the ASIC that we have designed in-house by outsourcing manufacturing to semiconductor foundry services in Japan and elsewhere. The testing lab that we have established within the Company enables us to evaluate prototype models, which contributes to the shortening the lengthy ASIC development cycle, which is growing longer and longer.
In this way, we are meeting and exceeding our customers’ expectations through breathing life into products by incorporating the algorithms that we have created in-house into optimized sensor devices to offer differentiated products that are unlike any other.

In the Company’s core business of mobility for automobiles, we are focusing our efforts on development aimed at the expected arrival of the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) era.
“SDV” means that the vehicle has been designed with architecture that has functions which can be upgraded in the future. After a user purchases an automobile, they will be able to add new functions through installing applications and upgrades, and expand their peripheral devices.
Based on our Digital Cabin concept, we are applying our areas of specialty in human interfaces (displays, sound, actuators) and sensing technology (electrostatic, high frequencies, magnetism) and combining them depending on the system or software, thereby conducting efforts aimed at the generation and maximization of customer value such as safety, comfort, and excitement in all situations from entering the car, to driving, and getting out of the car. In particular, regarding software development, we are working to strengthen our organization for the expected arrival of the software-centric era by securing resources so that we can handle large-scale system development through capital alliances and business partnerships with corporations in Japan and elsewhere.

Under our Corporate Philosophy of “Innovating Value for Humans and Society on a Brighter Planet,” Alps Alpine will continue taking on the challenge of further refining our core technologies and developing new technologies in order to meet the expectations of our customers.
Going forward, please look forward to exciting future developments from Alps Alpine.