Notable Moments

In April 1966, Kyocera received an order for substrates, a historic event for the company.

The order was from IBM for use in hybrid integrated circuits, the heart of System/360, a mainframe computer and key strategic product.

Orders were received for 25 million units at a value of 140 million yen, equivalent to 25% of Kyocera's annual sales at that time.

However, fabrication was extremely difficult.
The dimensions were as small as 11.5 mm square and 1.5 mm thick, and specifications such as alumina content, specific gravity, water absorption, permeability, transverse intensity, parallelism, flatness, and metallization strength were stipulated in detail in a thick booklet. At that time, Kyocera did not even have the necessary measuring equipment, so it started by developing measurement technology and devices.

Inamori - who had just been appointed president - took the lead, and despite many trials and tribulations at Kyocera, IBM approved a prototype only seven months after making the order. The next challenge was mass production. With the goal of producing one million units per month, a team of 80 people worked three shifts, 24 hours a day, with executives and senior managers sometimes helping with production.

This marked significant progress in Kyocera's technology, production capacity, and quality control capabilities. At the same time, Kyocera's credibility was enhanced by being selected by IBM, and orders began to arrive from semiconductor and electrical equipment manufacturers with whom Kyocera had previously had little dealings.

Photos
1: The IBM System/360, a large general-purpose computer
2: Substrate for the System/360