For Japan to contribute to improving the lives of people around the world and earn their respect for doing so, the advancement of science and technology are critically important. This is because science and technology hold the key to solving problems impending upon the whole of humanity, for example, global warming, abnormal weather, natural disasters and the contagious disease, famine, and poverty that spread in their wake, to name a few, and Japan as a country with few natural resources must make its contributions to the world through knowledge rather than through things.
Taking center stage in this kind of effort are research facilities. The development of research facilities has been undergoing dramatic change advancing in leaps and bounds. Since creating significant results necessitates a change from traditional research styles, new ways of research, such as the introduction of perspectives from cross-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary fields, joint research carried out by cooperating research institutions, and collaboration between industry and academia, are becoming widespread, giving rise to open innovation. While historically it used to be sufficient when high-precision specialized research facilities offered a lineup of "equipment," research facilities today are required to serve as the "incubator" that promotes new discoveries by researchers. The function of research facilities today has changed to serving as a place where researchers meet and exchange knowledge, offering an environment that stimulates researchers' immense creativity through the mental concentration and relaxation that simultaneously with immersion in their research unleashes researchers' genius.
Oriental Giken is the only specialist in Japan dedicated to research facilities. Products of the company to date include the Designer's Lab, a user-friendly high-performance lab specifically conceived with these concrete requirements of researchers in mind, emphasizing researchers' intellectual faculties and creative power; the Green Lab, conceptualized based on ecological sustainability for a future of sustained beauty of the global environment; and the Smart Lab, a next-generation laboratory featuring an accumulation of ICT-driven information management functions.
In this way, we will continue relentlessly in our study of applied sciences to support leading-edge technology and research environments.

Susumu Hayashi, Chairman