The MECHARTOLINK Members Association general meeting was held at UDX Conference in Akihabara, Tokyo, on June 1 (Fri), 2012. The meeting was a success with 130 participants from 62 member companies.

The meeting started with a welcome speech by Hiroshi Ogasawara, the President of the Executive Committee of the MMA. Takeshi Tanaka, the General Secretary of the MMA, then reported on the activities of FY2011 and activity plans for FY2012. This was followed by a FY2011 financial report by the MMA Secretariat. Thereafter, the MMA Marketing Group Chief and the PC Engineering Group Chief reported on each activity and announced an invitation to new group members to work together toward each group projects for FY2012.

Following the general meeting, Kohei Noguchi from Tokyo Electron Kyushu Ltd. gave a speech titled “Trend and Required Technologies for Semiconductor Production Equipment”. In his speech, he talked his unique experiences, and explained the future trend of semiconductors and what he expects from MECHATROLINK. The participants listened intently to his fruitful speech.

After the lecture, four MMA member companies introduced their MECHATROLINK compliant products.

For a special talk show to celebrate the year the MMA membership reached a 1000 milestone, the MMA invited a popular Japanese comic dialogist, Yoshichi Shimada, who wrote a book titled “GABAIBACHAN (a slang in Saga prefecture means My Amazing Grandma). He gave a talk, titled “EGAO DE IKINSHAI (Live Life with a Smile)”, about his life up to now including his elementary school days, in his unique way of expression. During his 70-minute talk, he sometimes made conversion with the participants and all participants could not stop laughing.

About 100 participants attended the reception following the meeting. This year, we arranged a time for all participants to introduce themselves, in addition to the time to exchange information among participants.

The steady increase of MMA membership makes us recognize that MECHATROLINK is highly demanded.
The MMA will continue to promote worldwide activities in the pursuit of making MECHATROLINK a global standard.

Gerneral Meeting