Nippon Telegraph & Telephone has joined up with three other companies – Sumitomo Electric, Tateishi Electric and Mitsubishi Rayon – to set up a factory automation engineering company called NTT Fanet Systems, with the aim of developing and selling Japan’s first standard optical MAP Manufacturing Automation Protocol network system using quartz fibre optic cable from Sumitomo, control technology from Tateishi and plastic optical fibre from Mitsubishi Rayon: the new company, capitalised at $700,000, with NTT holding 40% and other companies 20% each, will build a computer-integrated manufacturing system the Hikko Electric Works subsidiary of Mitsubishi Rayon to test out and prove the system it develops.
