To further accelerate the expansion of its industrial automation (IA) operations in North America, Yokogawa Electric Corporation’s North American subsidiary, Yokogawa Corporation of America, is constructing a new office building in Houston, Texas, and plans to move from its current Houston location to the new premises around June 2005.
In Houston the offices of headquarters and affiliates of major engineering firms stand side by side with those of the global petroleum and petrochemical industry players, making this the center of the world’s energy industry. Making one’s presence seen and felt there, and winning customer trust in this competitive environment is an extremely important business strategy in the IA business. To that end, Yokogawa America opened a Houston branch office in 1983, and it then transferred its control systems business headquarter functions there from the Georgia headquarters in June 2002. The active development of sales and marketing activities to build close customer relationships and win customer confidence has been reaping rewards such as a $50 million order from Shell Chemical LP for an instrumentation equipment renewal project at its chemical plant in Norco, Louisiana.
Teruyoshi Minaki, Director and Executive Vice President, says “Many large-scale projects are being planned in a number of oil and natural gas producing regions around the world, in the oil and natural gas energy related industries and the petrochemical industries. Yokogawa America is actively working to strengthen its share of the North American market and is targeting sales of $350 million by fiscal year 2008, which is twice the figure achieved in 2003. In order to meet this objective, it will be necessary to build up the number of sales, marketing, and engineering personnel. We will strengthen our presence in North America by demonstrating to our customers Yokogawa’s positive approach to the IA business.”
Key facts * ( ) = current offices
Location: Houston suburbs
Lot size: 73,000 m2 (20,235 m2)
Total floor space: 9,290m2 (4,274m2)
Total investment: $12 million
Number of personnel: 2004: 180 2007: 400
