In keeping with the corporate philosopy, Kyodo Yushi is committed to making contribution to society through putting into practice the essence of Tribology.
Our role is to listen to what a machine is telling us, so we can offer the lubricant that best suits our customer's needs, which we believe will serve the purpose of contributing to the industry in terms of better quality and more added value for our customers' products.
We always seek to figure out "how better the wear and friction can be controlled," hoping to open up new realm of applied Tribology as a team of lubricant specialists.
Kyodo Yushi was founded in 1936 as "Obune Shokai". Through business development the company changed its name to Kyodo Yushi Co., Ltd. in 1946 and commenced the manufacture and sales of lubricants.
Since then, with the goal of "improving the quality and increasing production of the important technical product lubricants, essential to the operation of any machinery", we have actively pursued the railway, iron and steel, automotive and other markets.
At the time, grease produced in Japan was not always of high quality, and was generally imported from Europe and America. Kyodo Yushi has been a frontrunner in achieving world quality standards, working to improve quality while introducing Western technology and setting up technical partnerships with overseas manufacturers. We believe that this was one factor in Kyodo Yushi being recognized by customers and becoming the largest grease manufacturer in Japan.
The continued commitment to "high quality" from the very beginning is the strength of our company.
"Multemp SRL", one of Kyodo Yushi's products, developed into the de facto standard for rolling bearing grease. At that time, with advances in technology for industrial products, high performance such as heat resistance, low temperature resistance, rust resistance, acoustic properties and long life were demanded. To meet these demands, Multemp SRL, developed by mutual cooperation with our customers, is now used all around the world.
Another example is the special vacuum grease for extreme conditions used by the Venus Climate Orbiter "Akatsuki". Highly reliable main motor bearing grease used in bullet trains. Continuous casting equipment grease that is resistant to forming a film of oil and has excellent heat resistance, load-bearing and water-resistant properties and retains the form of a lubricating film even under conditions of low speed. Constant-velocity joint grease that ensures both the durability of parts and a comfortable ride in automobiles. Grease for centralized lubricating system with the capability of preventing fire spread (the non-fire-spreadability) even if ignited.....
Our ability to develop greases that meet the various needs of our customers in this way - "development capability" - is our strength.
"Thickeners" play a role in converting base oil, the essential ingredient in grease, to a grease state (semi-solid). Greases that uses urea as a thickener are called "urea grease" and have superior heat resistance to the lithium grease in common use.
As a result of being one of the first to focus on urea and deepening our own R&D we discovered additional advantageous properties of urea. The many greases that we developed based on these research results extends to non-heat-resistant uses, such as automobile parts and electric parts, and today approximately half of the grease produced is urea grease.
Urea grease is useful and has great potential and we have achieved many research results and developed many products using it. Our position as "Masters of urea grease" is Kyodo Yushi's strength.
We have contributed to Japan's industry through lubrication up to now. We are now promoting improved products and support in foreign countries to respond to the globalization of our customers.
We have transferred the production and quality control know-how of our main Kameyama Office and Plant to our overseas production bases, and manufacture products to the same quality level as Japan.
Sales representatives all over the world use IT, such as our TV conference system, to directly connect with engineers and other colleagues in order to provide fast, timely responses to customer requests.
The strength of our company is our ability to "provide high-quality products and services overseas."
What is Tribology?
The word "Tribology" is a term derived from "tribo," a Greek word for "rub."
It was first used in 1964 by Prof. H. Peter Jost in a report titled "Lubrication (Tribology)" ("The Jost Report"). It was submitted to Minister of State for Education and Science of UK in response to the minister's request to give an opinion on how to promote lubrication education, research and industry for the purpose of strengthening UK's industrial competitiveness. The word has since been widely used with the meaning of the science and technology of friction, lubrication and wear.
According to the glossary of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), Tribology is defined as "the science and technology of interacting surfaces in relative motion and of related subjects and practices." Narrowly defined, it is a branch of science concerned with the phenomena that occur on two contacting surfaces and the technology to control them, dealing with such key words as surface, contact, friction, wear, and lubrication.
Tribology covers all phenomena that occur on two contacting solid surfaces, it is closely related not only to many industrial fields but also to medical (e.g. joints) and geological fields (e.g. earthquake and landslides). Dealing with such phenomena as contact, friction and wear between surfaces, Tribology is an interdisciplinary science that integrates various scientific fields including physics, chemistry, material mechanics, elastic-plastic mechanics, hydromechanics, thermal mechanics, medical science and biology, as well as knowledge of the field where Tribology is applied.