MILESTONE
Celebrating 60 years in Japan In October, Cummins Japan celebrated 60 years of business. To celebrate the milestone, Japanese employees joined a Zoom celebration led by Eric Waters, GM for DBU Japan, and Kei Sato, GM for EBU Japan. Pre-recorded Zoom messages from Peter Jensen-Muir, Executive Managing Director – Asia Pacific DBU, Mark R. Firth, President, Isuzu Cummins Powertrain Partnership, and Monika Gietz, Communication Manager, Asia Pacific, were played during the ceremony.
Monika Gietz, Communication Manager, Asia Pacific
Congratulations to Cummins Japan for reaching 60 years of business. Let’s celebrate this huge milestone with sake. Wishing you prosperity, health and success for the coming years.
The team celebrated the milestone with black keep cups.
Peter Jensen-Muir, Executive Managing Director - Asia Pacific DBU
Sixty years is an amazing achievement. Today, we work with great partners across Japan and we couldn’t have achieved this without the work from every one of you. We have even bigger potential now than ever before, as many existing and new customers and partners look to Cummins for their power solutions as they reduce their own investments in vertically integrated solutions.
History of Cummins Japan
The relationship between Cummins and Japan began in the 1950s when Power Development (a public corporation) was involved in building large-scale dams. At the time, Marunouchi’s US trading company Frazar International was Cummins’ agent. In the late 1950s, the US Forces Japan Procurement Headquarters in Yokohama announced a US-funded plan to supply Japanese military trucks to south-east Asian countries free as US military aid. Tens of thousands of trucks were scheduled to be purchased and Japanese truck manufacturers (like Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Hino) were excited. Komatsu Corporation, already a top construction machinery manufacturer in Japan, saw the military truck procurement plan as a great opportunity and decided to bid for it, but Komatsu’s diesel engine at the time was for construction machinery – medium speed with durability and reliability problems. Japan was unable to import engines (there was an extreme shortage of foreign currency) and the only way was to licence production in Japan. Cummins was interested in Komatsu’s offer and decided to cooperate, starting with the shipment of about 40 Cummins engines (743 cubic inches, 12 litres, 220 horsepower, 2100 rpm naturally aspirated).
Mark R. Firth, President, Isuzu Cummins Powertrain Partnership
We should really feel proud that we’ve grown our business in 60 years to what it is today and excited that we have current and future customers and partners wanting to grow their business with Cummins in Japan in the next few years. It is a really exciting time for us in Japan and I expect the business to grow quickly through the next decade.
12 DEC 2021
Komatsu built a prototype truck and tested it in large numbers at the base of Mt Fuji. More than 10 Cummins engineers came to Japan and the test results were excellent. The project lasted about two years, but a major US policy change meant the military truck procurement program ended in about 1960.
Team Talk – powering your voices across Cummins Asia Pacific
