Since starting Nidec in 1973 in a tiny Kyoto shed with just three workers, Shigenobu Nagamori has built it into the world's top maker of precision motors and became one of Japan's most venerated business leaders. Nagamori guided Nidec past Nissan and Panasonic in market ...

Daikin Industries, the world's largest maker of air conditioning equipment, is turning to Africa for further expansion, 10 years after a successful gamble on sharing its key technology with a Chinese company. As Japanese manufacturers such as Panasonic stepped back from home appliances over a ...

A two-armed robot in a Chiba factory carefully stacks rice balls in a box, which a worker carries off for shipment to convenience stores. At another food-packaging plant, a robot shakes pepper and powdered cheese over pasta that a person has just arranged in ...

As plans to sell Toshiba Corp.’s memory chip unit falter, some bankers and potential investors press the board to seriously consider alternatives, including picking a new buyer.

Faced with the prospect of a multi-billion-dollar writedown that could wipe out its shareholders' equity, Japan's Toshiba is running out of fixes: it is burning cash, cannot issue shares and has few easy assets left to sell. The Tokyo-based conglomerate, which is still recovering from ...