、The Now and Future of RionWhat work have you two been involved with so far? Since joining the company in 2010, I’ve mainly handled sales-related tasks. I was assigned to the New Business Promotion Sec-tion from the time it was established within the Environmental Instrument Division in April 2021. It’s a section that promotes new busi-nesses.Sales representatives are basically in charge of selling products. It’s not always possible to attend to all the issues facing our customers while going about our day-to-day duties. In the New Business Promotion Section, we start by trying to solve our customer’s problems. We provide services and other intangible merchan-dise. By doing so, we try to make our custom-ers become fans of Rion. I’ve been with the Medical Instru-ments Manufacturing Technology Section since joining Rion in 2012. The section itself belongs to the Medical Instrument Division. But my work involves a wide range of instruments, including environmental instruments, not just medical instruments.The Medical Instruments Manufacturing Tech-nology Section handles a fairly broad range of tasks, including work related to improving, standardizing, stabilizing, and automating manufacturing processes, as well as jig and tool design, the design and mounting of print-ed circuit boards, and the design, manufacture, and repairs of molds.Of these tasks, I’m in charge of work related to automating manufacturing processes and jig and tool design. Specifically, I’m in charge of work ranging from the assembly and adjust-ment of the electrical components of manufac-turing equipment and measuring systems to programming.I often get requests from within the company and work with other sections from the speci-cation review phase on.There doesn’t seem to be much overlap or connection between the two of you. Originally, there wasn’t any overlap at all. My section is customer-focused. Mr. Hara’s section is more internally focused. Our sections aren’t even in the same division. Our work is basically focused in different directions. But over the past year or so, our duties have crossed paths. The New Business Promotion Section is working on a project for our custom-ers. And I’ve recruited two members from the Medical Instruments Manufacturing Technol-ogy Section, including Mr. Hara, to join the team. They play a key role in providing a range of perspectives and technical support when we’re trying to bring project ideas to life. If you’re not in regular contact with others at Rion, you don’t know what technologies each of them has. Participating in this project made me realize people in the Environmental Instrument Division have lots of different technologies. My impression is that the project is progressing smoothly because each person contributes his or her own abilities to the project.Do you have any ideas regarding future hearing technologies? One technology involves microchips implanted in the body. For example, a micro-chip implanted in a person’s hand would allow the person to just place a hand over a sensor to unlock a key or punch a timecard. If people are open to ideas like this, microchips implant-ed in our bodies could well become a reality. It would be interesting to place a microchip in the ear as a receiver to directly transmit sound without the need to wear a hearing aid. If this becomes feasible, it may become a viable option for the Japanese people, who tend to want to hide the fact that they’re wearing hearing aids. The inconvenience of putting on hearing aids and the resistance to wearing them have long been issues. Hearing aid development has moved toward making hearing aids more aesthetically appealing or making them as small as possible. Eliminating these issues while ensuring effec-tive performance of hearing aids would be wonderful.I’ve been involved with work associated with sound and vibration measurement. There are actually things related to noise and vibration that I would like to see reduced in size or elimi-nated. Measuring instruments and sensors are connected by cables. Eliminating these cables would be great. It would be great to have the ability to embed sensors, just like implanting a microchip in the body, to obtain data remotely. You have a point. I feel like a revolu-tionary change is needed here, like eliminating certain aspects entirely, rather than making in-cremental improvements, like making products smaller. I think there’s the seed of an idea here. We often hear from customers about eliminating cables. It’s similar to wanting to eliminate the hassle of putting on your hearing aids. Whether the issue is for medical devices or mechanical instruments, if Rion can nd a way to eliminate these hassles, I think our cus-tomers would be quite pleased.How do you think Rion will apply robot technologies and artificial intelligence (AI)? Many of Rion’s products aren’t mass produced. Hearing aids are the only products we make for the general consumer market. Other products, including medical devices, en-vironmental instruments, and particulate mea-Future TechnoloFUTURE TALK 10Koji HaraMedical Instruments Manufacturing Technology Section, Medical Instrument Division. He has been assigned to the Medical Instruments Manufacturing Technology Section since joining Rion in 2021. He has mainly overseen process design work, including work involving im-proving, standardizing, stabilizing, and automating manufacturing processes, as well as jig and tool design.
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