When Sumitomo Electric USA opened their doors for business on October 25, 1971, they made history as the first Sumitomo Electric subsidiary to be established in the Americas. Back in those days, SEUSA had fewer than five employees and was focused on selling a small number of products. Now, half a century later, SEUSA has grown to over 90 employees and is responsible for customers in a variety of industries: automotive, energy, communications, semiconductor manufacturing, medical instruments, consumer electronics, and more. Their mission is to bring some of SEI's best technologies to these customers.

As SEUSA President Shigeru Kawabata tells us, "SEUSA has conducted a lot of business incubation from many different SEI business divisions. Though some of these ventures were unsuccessful, many were grown and eventually transferred to individual SEG companies. In recent years SEUSA has had several historical successes, such as a submarine power cable installation project and redox flow battery project (both in California). Moreover, SEUSA is now contributing to global-scale customers in the smartphone and data center markets, both of which are very important market segments for SEI. In the future, SEUSA will continue to incubate more business, not only by the motto 'think global, act local' but also by thinking locally and acting globally."

On this occasion of their 50th anniversary, we wish everyone at SEUSA much continued success in the years ahead!

On October 13 and 14, a team from Sumitomo Electric Lightwave was at Northern Virginia Community College to teach a course on how to perform fusion splicing of fiber optic cable. Fusion splicing is the process by which two optical cables are joined together, and is a critical skill for building out data centers and communication networks. SEL Senior Applications Engineer Ted Gaither was the main lecturer during the two-day course, which was attended by around 40 participants, many of whom are enrolled in the school's IT engineering department. According to Ted, "this successful educational endeavor was grounded in teamwork, eager and attentive NVCC students, supportive NVCC and Amazon staff, and a dedicated Sumitomo Electric team."

The event itself was organized by Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing subsidiary of e-commerce giant Amazon. AWS started these courses in 2019 as part of Amazon's workforce development initiative, and SEL has been there in support since the very beginning. The first few trainings were held at community colleges in Montana, Virginia, and Ohio. Now, after a long hiatus, the program is back in business, with more sessions to be held at schools and military bases in the months ahead. Broadband communications are an important part of the country's infrastructure, and demand for technicians continues to grow. As a leading supplier of fiber optic technology, SEL is happy to help people acquire the technical skills needed to work in this growing field.

In recognition of their outstanding wellness program, Sumitomo Electric Wiring Systems was recently honored with the 2021 Platinum Award from the Worksite Wellness Council of Louisville, Kentucky. The council is an organization that promotes healthy work cultures at local companies by providing information on how to develop wellness programs. Every year, they use a comprehensive scorecard to evaluate their member companies' efforts at encouraging better nutrition, physical activity, smoking cessation, stress management, occupational safety, and other aspects of wellness. The scores are then used to determine the recipients of bronze, silver, gold, and platinum awards.

This year was the sixth year in a row for SEWS to receive the Platinum Award, which is earned by the highest scoring companies. SEWS's six-year streak — seven if we include their 2015 Gold Award — is one of the longest among the dozens of companies that participate in the Worksite Wellness Council. During this time SEWS has not only been strongly committed to the health and wellness of their associates, but they've also actively shared knowledge about their activities with other local companies and SEG companies. Their work on wellness continues at next month's SEWS Wellness Summit, which will be covered in the next newsletter. In the meantime, congratulations to everyone at SEWS for this year's Platinum Award!

The 4th Mexico HR Conference was held this year as a virtual meeting on Oct. 6 and 7, and was attended by more than 140 HR professionals from several SEG companies. Many of the participants had a chance to give presentations to their colleagues, as a major part of the conference was the sharing of best practices by representatives from CONTEC (four locations), ATR (two locations), Sumitomo Hardmetal de Mexico, K&S, and SEBN Mexico. In addition, participants heard from a guest speaker about how diversity and inclusion can contribute to a positive work environment, and received updates on the current situation in Mexico's labor market.

Since its inception in 2018, the Mexico HR Conference has been a valuable event for exchanging information on HR matters that affect manufacturing operations there. The conference organizers at SEUHO, CONTEC, ATR, and K&S look forward to another well-attended and successful meeting next year.

When SEI launched a new corporate website earlier this year, they made sure to include lots of information about our products, growth strategy, and financial performance. For many people, especially customers and investors, these facts are certainly important. But job seekers quite often have another question in mind: "What's it like to work at your company?"

To address this question, a new section called Our People has been added to SEI's website. It features short descriptions from SEG employees about their workplace experiences. There are five stories to begin with (two from the Americas, three from Europe), and more will be coming from different countries in the months ahead. Spearheading the development of this content is SEUHO Assistant VP Pavee Suvagondha, who said "I hope this section will give prospective employees a clearer picture of what it is like to work at our group companies. This project has been a collaboration with our colleagues around the world, and it illustrates the strength we have in our global network."

To check out the new section, click here.

Since its launch in 2007, SEI's Global Leadership Development Program (GLP) has been attended by more than 500 managers from group companies around the world. In a typical year, participants travel to Osaka, Japan, to take an intensive three-day workshop on leadership skills, which culminates in every participant giving a short presentation to SEI's Board of Directors. The presentations are about each person's unique business challenge and the action plan that he or she envisions to tackle the challenge.

This not being a typical year, however, the GLP was instead conducted for 35 managers as a series of online sessions from June to August. The six participants from the Americas then gave their final presentations to SEI's board in September, and this month completed the program with a debriefing session for our region's Group Global Executives.

SCI Senior Sales Manager Jason Vetter noted that "SEI did a fabulous job with setting up the curriculum," which enabled participants to meet the program's three key objectives: deepen their understanding of The Sumitomo Spirit, develop leadership skills, and build new relationships. From Jason's perspective, "the leadership part impressed upon me the most; I learned the most from that." He added, "I really liked the camaraderie among the participants. It was great getting to know people at other companies."

This sentiment was echoed by Chad Boggs, SEWS Deputy Business Unit General Manager (Midwest Business Unit). "For me, all the partnerships was the most beneficial thing," said Chad. "It helped keep accountability with the team members. We met several times outside of the regular sessions to pick each other's brains about our activities, challenge plans, and the path forward with those." That was particularly useful because "we were being challenged to look at how to innovate."

The GLP will continue next year with the aim of further cultivating the leadership mindset among SEG managers worldwide. For a summary of how SEI President Inoue viewed this year's program, click here.

After a long break Sumitomo Electric Carbide was back at trade shows this month, enjoying the opportunity to speak directly with cutting tool customers. From Oct. 19 to 21, the SCI team was in Massachusetts to exhibit at EASTEC, a popular trade show for manufacturers in the Northeast. This year's EASTEC featured almost 450 exhibitors, all there to help manufacturers find ways to boost their efficiency (something that SCI's cutting tools are extremely good at). And this week, SCI was in Kansas for the Wichita Industrial Trade Show, a showcase for manufacturers in the Midwest. SCI joined around 200 exhibitors at this event to talk to potential buyers about what's new in manufacturing technology. Based on feedback from the field, SCI will assess how many trade shows they should add to their calendar in 2022.

Fall is a great time for festivals, such as the one that took place on October 23 in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, the home of Judd Wire. In beautiful weather, residents and visitors to the town were treated to live music, more than 150 vendors selling food and arts & crafts, and activities like pumpkin painting and carnival games. At Judd Wire's booth, HR Manager Magda Malejko and CSR Tonya Gnoza spent the afternoon giving out candy and talking to people about working at the company. It looked like a wonderful day to be outdoors and interacting with the local community.

On Oct. 27, the Risk Management Committee had their quarterly meeting and focused on four topics: export control compliance, import control compliance, anti-phishing training, and third party risk management. SEG companies continue to make progress in these areas, as we collectively work toward minimizing various risks to our business operations.

The Sumitomo Monozokuri Development Committee also met on Oct. 27, and kicked off their meeting by welcoming new member company CONTEC to the group. In terms of the committee's top two priorities, Keystone Powdered Metal Company shared best practices on items in the Monozukuri Fundamentals Assessment, while SEWS El Paso gave a talk on 200 Kaizen examples from their facility. Last month's Kaizen Summit was also reviewed, as were ideas for how to make the next summit even better.

The Environmental Health & Safety Committee had their monthly session on Oct. 14, at which time they went over a safety bulletin from SEI, a case study by Judd Wire, and a presentation from SESMI on how to ensure safety for multi-worker operations. It was also announced that, as of the first half of this fiscal year, all member companies had achieved Level 3 separation of forklifts and pedestrians at their facilities. (There are five levels in SEI's forklift safety initiative. Level 3 is defined as "isolation with simple measures," which means partitioning with portable barriers such as fences and chains.)

On November 10, all committees and working groups will be giving updates on their activities to the SEG executives in our region. We will have more info on this meeting in next month's newsletter.

The Sumitomo Electric Group, in accordance with the Sumitomo Spirit and the Sumitomo Electric Group Corporate Principles, strives to be a group of companies worthy of society's trust by conducting our business activities with utmost integrity. To learn more about our corporate philosophy, click here.

The SEG Code of Conduct is a statement of our shared values and the standards of conduct that are expected of each of us. It describes the fundamental principles and key policies that govern how we conduct business. The Code applies to all Company employees, officers, and directors, at every level. To download a copy of the Code, click here.

The SEG Compliance Hotline is an anonymous, confidential reporting system maintained by an independent third party, Navex, who immediately refers all hotline reports to SEI's Compliance and Risk Management Office. Please note that the SEG prohibits retaliation against anyone who reports concerns or raises questions in good faith. To access the hotline, click here.