Technology and Production Administrative Division Manufacturing Division Research Division Business Division R&D Promotion Section General Center of Research & Development Base Technology Center Applied Research Laboratory New Products Research Laboratory Productive Technology Laboratory Commodity Chemicals Department Acrylic Products Department Development Group Development Group Development Group Products Development Group Development Group Functional Chemicals Advanced Department Chemicals Department New products New business Elemental technologies Core Technologies New Technologies Institute for Advanced Sciences Research and Development Administrative Division Outside research institutions Bioinformatics At the Toagosei Group, developing high value added products as well as creating new products and businesses are listed among our mid-term management plan goals. In order to focus new product development in growth fields while accelerating product development in existing fields, we have revised our conventional organizational system for business units. Now, the General Center of Research & Development consistently manages everything from basic research to applied research, product development, and production technology development. This cross-divisional system can distribute researchers flexibly across crucial fields, while improving the creativity and skills of each researcher through robust human resources development. The Toagosei is taking stock of its core technologies and the constituent elemental technologies, and aims to accelerate R&D by effectively assigning personnel specialized in each elemental technology in response to issues. In addition to defining the priority order and critical level of themes according to topics that are optimized for the entire organization instead of according to section or division priorities, we efficiently conduct R&D by spreading product development, elemental technologies, and other fields across multiple business sections and divisions. In research and development, we need to leverage our unique strengths to identify the portfolio of businesses and technologies that we want to have in the next ten or twenty years, working as pioneers to go beyond merely providing “materials” to making “functions” that offer excellent productivity and convenience. With the group of technologies that make up our core competencies (the core power of our group that allows us to provide customers with unique values that cannot be imitated by other companies), we are breaking ground in new fields, and pushing product development based on exploratory research, specialized technologies, and more, to create new technologies and functions. We will continue to enter new business fields by conducting technology development. We aim to develop high value added products as well as create new products and businesses. R&D Strategy R&D System At Toagosei, in order to accelerate the development of new next-generation products, we have Base Technology Center, Applied Research Laboratory, New Products Research Laboratory, and Productive Technology Laboratory in our General Center of Research & Development, and have established a consistent R&D system from basic research to applied research, product development, and production technology development. In addition to organizing and clarifying the core technologies and their elemental technologies, we develop original products that are linked directly to the needs of the user, as well as integrate those elemental technologies with new ones. Since our General Center of Research & Development is situated on the site adjacent to our Nagoya Plant, we have strengthened cooperation between the R&D, production technology, and production departments. In the laboratory Toagosei Co., Ltd. 22