Yamaha Motor IM Company's total surface mounter production tops 10,000 mark

Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.'s (YMC) in-house company IM Company (President: Tsuneji Togami; Location: Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Pref.) topped the 10,000 mark in total surface mounter production on February 7, 2001, and a ceremony was held to celebrate this milestone at the Soude Factory. The 10,000th model to be shipped was one of the "YV100X" modular type high-speed surface mounter released in March, 1999.

As a new extension of its industrial robot operations building products to aid in the automation of our factories, YMC ventured into the surface mounter field in 1987 with the "YM4600S," a mounter of electrical parts on printed circuit boards.
In 1988, YMC entered a business relationship with the European electronics maker Philips EMT for the supply of Yamaha surface mounters on an OEM basis. Presently, YMC has a long-term contract with Philips for the development, manufacture and sales of surface mounters until 2006.
In April of last year, Yamaha strengthened its surface mounter operations with the founding of IM Company. In conjunction with this move a new company named "i Pulse Co., Ltd." was also established as an associate manufacturing and sales company to further strengthen our competitiveness and business base in the IM field.

In the surface mounter industry in recent years there has been an increase in demand for larger high-speed mounters oriented toward mass production and mid-speed class mounters with a high degree of multi-purpose adaptability. At Yamaha Motor we have placed our priority on high levels of multipurpose versatility to handle the increasing diversity of part types and have continued to offer a line of mid-class module type models that can be used with several units in line to create high-speed production lines.
In particular, Yamaha surface mounters have won acclaim in the industry as "modular type high-speed mounters" that greatly improve speed, operability and multipurpose versatility when used not only alone but with two or more units set up in-line. Presently Yamaha offers a line of 14 models of surface mounters. For this fiscal year (Apr. 2000 ~ Mar. 2001) we are expecting a total production of 2,200 units of these surface mounters, a 40% increase over the previous fiscal year.