Denso


DENSO Corporation is a global automotive components manufacturer headquartered in the city of Kariya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan.
After becoming independent from Toyota Motors, it was founded as Nippon Denso Co. Ltd. in 1949. About 25% of the company is owned by Toyota Motor. Despite being a part of the Toyota Group of companies, as of the year ending March 2016, sales to the Toyota Group accounted for less than 50% of the total revenue. In 2016, Denso was the fourth largest auto parts supplier in the world.
As of 2016, Denso Corporation consisted of 189 subsidiaries with a total of 151,775 employees. The company is further escalating its global production structure by establishing manufacturing complexes in India, Mexico and Indonesia in order to accommodate further global demand for their products. In 2013 Denso was listed at #242 on the Fortune Global 500 list with a total revenue of $43.1 billion.

Name meaning

The name Denso is a blend word of the Japanese language terms for "electricity" and "device".

Sales

The company develops and manufactures various auto parts, including gasoline and diesel engine components, hybrid vehicle components, climate control systems, instrument clusters, air-bag systems, pre-crash radar systems, and spark plugs. Denso also develops and manufactures non-automotive components, such as household heating equipment, industrial robots and the QR Code. The Denso Industrial Robot gained wide public attention in Japan when it conducted a game of Shogi against professional players.
In 2014, DENSO's global sales were distributed as follows:
In June 2020, Denso announced that it has opened its Electrification Innovation Center at its plant in Anjo, Aichi, Japan. The facility will support the company’s development of products and technologies for electric and hybrid vehicles.

Motorsports

Denso being a part of the Toyota Group has been very helpful for Toyota in participating and developing cars for the top motorsports series in the world, Denso makes autoparts and many other electronics for Toyota Racing Development as well as Toyota Motorsport GmbH in Cologne, Germany who operated Toyota's Formula One Team, Toyota's World Rally Championship Team and now Toyota's FIA World Endurance Championship team, Toyota TS030 Hybrid which use a Denso Kinetic Energy Recovery System finished second in the 2013 24 Hours of Le Mans. Being a part of the Toyota family, Denso products are also used for other Japanese Motorsport cars, Example Formula Nippon, and Japan Super GT 500/300.

Denso Wave

is a subsidiary that produces automatic identification products, industrial robots and programmable logic controllers.
They are noted for creating the two dimensional QR code, are a member of the Japan Robot Association and support the ORiN standard.

DENSO International America

DENSO International America is the American subsidiary of DENSO Corporation.
In 1970, DENSO Corporation decided to expand overseas from Kariya, Japan to North America. In March 1971 DENSO Sales California, Inc. was founded in Hawthorne, California. The company was staffed with only 12 associates, four of them were Americans. The objective of DENSO Sales California was to promote their air conditioner systems to be options in Japanese-made vehicles.
In May 1975 DENSO Corporation opened a sales division, DENSO Sales, in Southfield, Michigan.
In September 1975 DENSO International America opened a service center in Cedar Falls, Iowa. This was opened due to an agricultural parts contract with John Deere including starter motors and meters.
DENSO International America employs over 17,000 people at 38 locations between North, Central, and South America. At year end, on March 31, 2008, combined sales totaled $8.3 billion for all American locations.

Price fixing

On January 30, 2012, the US Justice Department announced after two years of investigation that it had discovered part of a massive price fixing scheme in which Denso and Yazaki played a significant role. The conspiracy, which fixed prices and allocated components to such car manufacturers as Toyota and Honda, extended from Michigan to Japan, where it was also under investigation. Denso agreed to pay a fine of $78 million.