As Muratec turns 80 years old, I thought I’d post the Wiki post about their history.

Murata Machinery, Ltd. (村田機械株式会社 Murata Kikai Kabushiki-gaisha?), abbrev. MML, is a privately held Japanese international company founded in 1935 with its Head Office at Fushimi-ku, Kyoto

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History

Nishijin Jacquard Mfg., the predecessor of Murata Machinery, Ltd. was founded in 1935 and mainly developed the business of textile machinery. Nishijin Jacquart expanded into the machine tools industries in 1961, and automated systems in 1962 At that time, the company name was changed to the present Murata Machinery, Ltd. In 1970, Murata Machinery began selling facsimile machines in Japan.

In 1970 Murata Machinery’s textile machinery division, developed the “Mach Splicer” device which can join yarn using air flow without knot. The Automatic Winders equipped with the Mach Splicer started to be delivered to world-wide factories and still remain the core products of this company. The synthetic fiber machine business was transferred to TMT Machinery, Inc., which was jointly funded in 2002 by the three leading manufacturers of synthetic fiber machinery in Japan that merged their synthetic textile machinery business units  ; Toray Engineering, Murata Machinery and Teijin Seiki(present Nabtesco).

The company entered the U.S. market in 1982 as Murata Business Systems to sell fax machines through private-label agreements with multiple U.S. companies. In January, 1985, the company began marketing its facsimile products under the Murata name from its corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

In 1991, Murata Machinery company-wide introduced the new unified brand name, “MURATEC”. They created the stylized letter as their company logo mark. This logo features the highly symbolic[1] capital ”M”, which expresses their philosophy, “seeking human technology without limits” and their pledge, “to create a better environment through easier man-machine interfaces”.[2]

In Aug. 2009, the wholly owned subsidiary, Muratec Automation Co. Ltd., was established when Murata Machinery split the business unit for Automated Material Handling Systems for Semiconductor and FPD and acquired Asyst Technology Japan and then integrated these business units.. In 2012 Muratec Automation was merged into Murata Machinery Ltd. and the Clean FA Division was established.

In Dec., 2011, Silex Technology Inc., became a wholly owned subsidiary of Murata Machinery. It is expected that this will result in not only generation of synergy in digital multifunctional products and the telecommunication business unit, but also application of wireless communication to the industrial machinery sector such as machine tools.[3]

In Oct.2014, Murata Machinery acquired 100% ownership of Cimcorp Oy (Ulvila, Finland). Cimcorp is the top supplier for intralogistics in the tire industry, so it is expected that both company can be a one-stop-shop in the material handling system industry throughout the world.[4]

Click here to learn more about Muratec’s office equipment group