Railway vehicle industry

Japanese: 鉄道車両工業 - てつどうしゃりょうこうぎょう（英語表記）railway vehicle industry

This industry manufactures railroad locomotives, electric trains, passenger cars, freight cars, and their parts, and is classified as a transportation equipment industry. It is also generally called the vehicle industry. (1) It is made to order, and mass production methods cannot be used in the home electrical appliance and automobile industries, but it produces a wide variety of products in small quantities. (2) Like the automobile industry, it is an assembly industry (main parts such as the chassis are manufactured in-house, but it is a general industry that uses various raw materials such as steel, light metals, glass, paint, wood, plastic, and fiber, and about half of the cost is purchased parts). (3) It relies on many aspects of manual labor and cannot escape from a labor-intensive form. Japanese companies are technically at the world's top level, as seen in the Shinkansen train, but demand is limited to orders from JR, private railways, and exports, so the profitability of companies is low. For this reason, part-time and full-time workers are making use of their vehicle manufacturing technology to enter fields such as bridges, steel frames, boilers, construction machinery, high-pressure vessels, aluminum sashes, and marine containers.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia About Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Information

Japanese:

鉄道用の機関車，電車，客車，貨車およびその部品を製造する工業で，輸送用機器工業に入れられる。一般には車両工業ともいう。 (1) 注文生産で，家庭電気機器，自動車産業のように大量生産方式がとれず，多種少量生産であること，(2) 自動車工業と同じように，組立て工業であること (車台など主要部分は自家製造するが，鉄鋼，軽金属，ガラス，塗料，木材，プラスチック，繊維などの各種原材料を使用する総合工業であり，コストの約半分は部品購入) ，(3) 手作業に依存する部面が多く，労働集約的な形態から抜け出せないこと，などの特色がある。日本の企業は技術的には，新幹線電車にみられるように世界のトップレベルにあるが，JRの発注，私鉄向け，輸出と需要が限定されているため，企業の収益性は低い。このため，兼業，専業を問わず，その車両製造技術を生かして，橋梁，鉄骨，ボイラ，建設機械，高圧容器，アルミサッシ，海上コンテナなどの分野に進出している。

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