Activities in the Optical Device Business

In the manufacture of lenses, both glass and plastic are used. Glass is polished and plastic is molded with special technologies. For this reason, in the lens manufacturing industry, division of labor and outsourcing are taken for granted. However, FUJINON has all the technologies required for the treatment and processing of the materials, and as its strong point, has been responsible for product development, design, molding, manufacture, and inspection in an integrated manner. The company has also In the manufacture of lenses, both glass and plastic are used. Glass is polished and plastic is molded with special technologies. For this reason, in the lens manufacturing industry, division of labor and outsourcing are taken for granted. However, FUJINON has all the technologies required for the treatment and processing of the materials, and as its strong point, has been responsible for product development, design, molding, manufacture, and inspection in an integrated manner. The company has also manufactured lenses for Utsurundesu (a roll of film with a lens) and has acquired the technology needed to massproduce small lenses with high performance, which provides it with a big competitive advantage.

Using all these strengths, FUJINON successfully developed lenses for cell phone cameras as its representative product. Early in the 2000s, soon after the cell phone camera market was launched, the company began developing highly value-added lenses for the phones, predicting that high-quality and highly functional lenses would be needed in the future, although the image quality of 100,000 to 300,000 pixels was the standard for cell phone cameras at that time. Now that an image quality of three million pixels is becoming the standard, FUJINON is far and away the top maker of high-performance lenses in the three million-pixel or higher image quality. In order to ensure that photos are taken at a high definition exceeding three million pixels, multiple lenses need to be combined. FUJINON has reduced the number of lenses used by introducing complex-shaped aspheric lenses, thereby achieving a downsizing. What is more, the company can produce a stable supply of several million products each month-an incredibly large number.

Manufacturers of parts that are used in products sold in very large quantities across the world such as cell phones and security cameras need to be cost competitive in addition to having the ability to produce stable supplies of high-performance products. FUJINON has been preparing for this type of market its since early days. In 1994 the company launched a production base in Tianjin and established one more in Shenzhen in 2001, and is now processing and assembling lens units at the bases 24 hours a day. As the scale of production expands, the stable procurement of optical materials usually becomes more difficult, but FUJINON has already established a system for stable procurement by investing in a Chinese company that has the world’s largest glass furnace and by concluding a preferential supply agreement with that company.

By establishing a robust product system, FUJINON can produce stable supplies of manufactured products, and in order to ensure the precision of the products, the company is implementing drastic measures to manage quality at its Chinese bases as strictly as in Japan.

While increasing the number of products for which it can enjoy the top share by strengthening its sales power, FUJINON will add more value to its products by developing its lens units into camera modules through stronger cooperation with FUJIFILM’s departments dealing with electronic imaging devices such as digital cameras. The Fujifilm Group aims to expand its optical device business even more through this kind of cooperation.