Takemitsu Takizaki (born 10 June 1945) is a Japanese billionaire businessman, honorary chairman and founder of Keyence, a Japanese manufacturer of automation sensors, vision systems, barcode readers, laser markers, measuring instruments, and digital microscopes. As of September 29, 2022, Takizaki has a net worth of US$18.6 billion.
Takizaki is the founder of Keyence, a Japanese electronic sensor maker. The Osaka-based company makes products that are used on assembly lines by customers such as Toyota and Toshiba, and had revenue of 755.2 billion Japanese yen ($6.7 billion) in the year to March 20, 2022. Takizaki stepped down as company chairman in 2015.
The majority of Takizaki’s fortune is derived from his stake in Keyence, an Osaka-based electronic sensor maker. He owns 18% of the business directly and through holding company TT KK, according to the company’s 2022-2023 second-quarter report. The entire fortune is attributed to the billionaire to reflect his status as founder.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of stock transactions, calculated dividends, market performance and taxes.
Ryu Nakayama, an executive in the management office of Keyence, declined to comment on Takizaki’s net worth.
Biography
Takemitsu Takizaki was born in the southwestern Japanese prefecture of Kyogo in June 1945, about two months before the end of World War II. He was educated at Amagasaki Industry High School. After graduating from high school, he took a job working for a foreign machinery company. During the next decade he started two businesses that both went bankrupt, leading him to focus on building electronic sensor maker Keyence debt free, according to a July 2013 story in President Online, the online version of Japanese magazine President.
Takizaki founded Lead Electric, the predecessor to Keyence, with three employees in 1974. He changed the company’s name 12 years later, a play on the company’s slogan, “Key to Science.”
The billionaire ran Keyence using unconventional management methods compared to traditional Japanese corporations, according to a September 2006 article in President. At most companies in Japan, lower-ranked employees hold elevator doors for senior managers before stepping off elevators. Takizaki made it a company rule that such courtesy didn’t matter, and insists the person closest to the door should get off first because it’s more efficient, according to the President article. To break down traditional hierarchy, he also encouraged employees to call each other by their names instead of titles, which is uncommon in the country.
An avid fossil collector, Takizaki placed the remnants of the past throughout the company’s headquarters, according to a September 2006 story in Nikkei Business News. The message he wanted to convey: If you don’t produce new products to cope with changes, you’ll be extinct like fossils.
The high-school graduate helped invent the precision sensors used on assembly lines to build cars for Toyota Motor Corp. and chips for Toshiba Corp. His employees are among the highest paid in the Japanese machinery industry with an average annual salary of about 16.5 million yen ($137,000) in the year ended March 2015, according to its 2014 annual report. Besides, employees are also paid bonuses four times a year.
The billionaire stepped down as chairman and took the title of honorary chairman in March 2015.
Milestones
- 1945 Takemitsu Takizaki is born in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
- 1963 Graduates from Amagasaki Industry High School near the city of Kobe.
- 1972 Starts Lead Electric, the forerunner of Keyence, in Itami City.
- 1974 Incorporates Lead Electric and becomes its president.
- 1986 Renames as Keyence, combining “Key” and “Science.”
- 1987 Sells Keyence shares in an Osaka initial public offering.
- 1989 Lists Keyence shares in the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
- 2006 Produces world’s first three-dimensional laser marker.
- 2014 Subsidiary JustSystems starts trading on the Tokyo exchange.
- 2015 Retires as chairman to become honorary chairman.
