Electric machinery. (Japanese Companies in the United States).

Arguably, no big Japanese electric machinery manufacturer has been more willing than TOSHIBA CORP. to spin off operations judged to fall outside its core businesses. This restructuring often involves the formation of a joint venture with a foreign partner to run the divested unit. In the latest such example, Toshiba will tie up with France's SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC S.A. to design, develop and make general-purpose inverters ranging up to 630-kilowatt models for sale under each parent's brand names. The two firms, which have worked together since 1988, believe that by joining forces, they can become the world leader in the extremely fragmented market for general-purpose inverters. Toshiba and Schneider Electric will form a holding company incorporated in France in which Toshiba will have a 40 percent stake. Under the holding company will be three regional subsidiaries. The European one will be based at an existing Schneider Electric facility in France. In Japan, a company will be set up, also at the beginning of 20 01, in Mie prefecture where Toshiba currently makes inverters and related equipment; the Japanese partner will have a 51 percent interest in this venture. The third, American, subsidiary will be headquartered in Houston. This still-unnamed company will be established sometime before 2004 and will be wholly owned by the holding company. It will combine the U.S. adjustable speed drive (inverter) operations of Schneider Electric, which owns SQUARE D CO., and Toshiba. Although the details are sketchy, Toshiba presumably will transfer the inverter business of its Houston-based TOSHIBA INTERNATIONAL CORP. manufacturing subsidiary to the joint venture while continuing production on its own of other TIC products. Those include motors, motor controls and power electronic products. TIC, which has been in operation since 1980, employs more than 1,000 people and exports about 25 percent of its output.

The growth-through-acquisition strategy continues at GE FANUC AUTOMATION NORTH AMERICA, INC. (see Japan-u.s. Business Report No. 365, February 2000, P. 4). In its latest move, the long-standing Charlottesville, Virginia venture between FANUC LTD. and GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., already one of the world's major suppliers of industrial control systems, bought DATAVIEWS CORP. of Northampton, Massachusetts from DYNATECH CORP. DataViews develops software that allows operators of factory automation equipment to customize the way they view and access information. Its graphical-interface development tools, used by approximately 30,000 people worldwide, are available for Windows, Unix, Linux and Web-based environments, complementing GE Fanuc's open-solutions approach to factory automation.

San Jose, California will be the location of PIONEER CORP.'s U.S. digital networking research center (see Japan-U.S. Business Report No. 365, February 2000, p. 5). The start-up staff of seven initially will collect information to keep the consumer electronics producer abreast of technical advances in the field of linked digital audio-visual home entertainment products. In time, though, the facility could be a major contributor to the development of the software necessary to network such digital information appliances as TVs and PCs.

MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORP.'s Cypress, California consumer and industrial electronics marketing unit will ship in November 2000 the first video-data wall display to incorporate TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC.'s clarity-boosting Digital Micromirror Device chip in the engine of the rear-projection system. The ...