100 YEARS OF YANMAR
On March 22, 2012, Yanmar celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. It gives the company great pleasure to now publish the English edition of Yanmar’s 100-year history.
We are eternally grateful to our customers who have offered us their patronage, our business connections who have cooperated with us, and the local communities that have given us their backing for more than a century.
As we look back, this century has been a period of attempting to be of service to people’s work and everyday life and to contribute to local communities and the world at large, by means of developing the type of engines and work machines that are required by the changing times and by various people around the world.
This photograph was taken 90 years ago in 1925 in Sasayama,Hyogo Prefecture. It shows the first powered pump installed in the village vigorously pumping water from the river. Leaders of the village, dressed in their finest for this great event, look on intently.At that time, watering fields by means of physical labor was an enormous burden, so the installation of a powered pump had a huge impact on the welfare of villages like this one.
After the photo was taken, the company continued to develop oil engines and in 1933 it developed and put into practical use the world’s first small diesel engine. Following World War II, it dedi-cated all of its energies to the diffusion of diesel engines, to devel-oping diesel-powered, labor-saving, reduced-manpower machinery and to opening new markets around the world for agricultural,marine, construction and industrial uses.
During this century, the company encountered numerous ordeals including wars, postwar confusion, oil crises, trade friction and nat-ural disasters, but our predecessors in the company overcame them with intelligence and strenuous effort.
The business environment which Yanmar finds itself in today is one of great change and the company is facing increasingly serious issues including preserving and harmonizing with the global envi-ronment and responding to a globalizing market.
On the occasion of the company’s 100th anniversary, the Yanmar Group has formulated a new Mission Statement. It is the result of the hopes of a project team composed of young employees. While it is expressed in simple words, it matches perfectly the spirit of founder Magokichi Yamaoka: “To conserve fuel is to serve man-kind” and “Grateful to serve for a better world.”
It is our goal to have each employee of the Yanmar Group become deeply conscious of this Mission Statement, to consider what we can do for our customers, to have pride in our work and be encouraged in our daily activities, and to strive for solutions to whatever issues arise, and further, to aim to achieve a society with the future in mind and an abundant way of life.
In closing, it is our hope that this history of Yanmar’s first cen-tury will enable the reader to grasp the wisdom and the determina-tion of our predecessors and to embody that legacy in new activity.Further, we would be extremely happy if this volume proves helpful in understanding the company’s businesses. The Yanmar Group kindly asks for your continued good will in the years to come.