NSK Moving Bearing Engineering to Satellite R&D Centers

NSK Moving Bearing Engineering to Satellite R&D Centers NSK Ltd. said it will begin implementing a strategic shift in its approach to engineering bearings for specific customer and market applications. NSK's core engineering and design work all takes place in Japan now, where customer needs and specifications are funneled in from several R&D centers around the world. The new approach will keep the core design and engineering function in NSK's Fujisawa R&D center. But responsibility for final customer-specific and market-specific applications engineering will gradually shift to those satellite R&D centers in key markets. Moving final design and engineering responsibilities closer to customers and end markets, NSK hopes to not only become more responsive to those customers and markets, but also maintain a deep set of competitive core skills in Japan. The satellite R&D centers are located in China, Thailand, the UK and the United States. All will be expanded and technical resources added. NSK said the new system will take at least five years to roll out across those key markets. In the meantime, all bearing engineers and designers are being rotated through Fujisawa. The intent is that they will acclimate to the coming changes, and familiarize themselves with different foreign market and customer design approaches, in the hopes of facilitating internal communications and cross-market experience.