Student ID: 21D18254 Name: Yifei Cai Lecture name: Global_RD Session:3

In the lecture, we had a very intuitive lecture from Caterpillar Japan. To tell the truth, I have never
heard about Caterpillar Inc. before lecture. However, it is a world-famous company and the world’s
largest construction equipment manufactures. In the lecture, we were introduced the job system in
Caterpillar. Employees may choose the path to be an expert or to be a leader depending on their
own preference.
Among the episodes introduced in the lecture, I was most impressed by the story about that
Caterpillar Inc. help the government and people with clean-up after the destruction of tornadoes
that hit Oklahoma City in 2021. When I heard one of Caterpillar employee said in an interview
that, she is very proud that the equipment she made is actually helping people who is suffering.
This episode really changed my mind. When I am doing my job hunting in the future, I should put
more weight on evaluating that whether my work and my company is indeed contributing to the
society instead of just taking money from the population. Hopefully some day in the future I can
also say that I am proud that my work is actually helping people.
Another information from the lecturer that impressed me is the fact that I have never heard of
Caterpillar company in my 27-years life so far; while in fact, it is the largest company construction
equipment industry and ranked number 65 on the Fortune 500 in 2018. This fact remind me the
necessity to do more investigation before staring my job hunting. Since the amount of company
that I know is very limited, and I may pass by many outstanding and valuable companies due to
the lack of investigation. Since my research field is concerned with electrical motor/generator
engineering, I search on the internet for the famous motor manufacturers in the world. Following
is the list of the top global manufacturers for electric machines:
1. Nidec; Japan; Market Share: 12.9%
2. ABB (Asea Brown Boveri); Switzerland; Market Share: 6.9%
3. General Electric (GE); USA; Market Share: 3.1%
4. Rockwell Automation; USA; Market Share: 3.0%
5. WEG; Brazil; Market Share: 2.2%
6. MinebeaMitsumi; Japan; Market Share: 2.1%
7. Wolong Electric Drive; China; Market Share: 1.7%
8. Togen Electric; Japan; Market Share: 0.9%
Before investigating the top global electric machine manufacturers, I mainly targeted on
companies in electric vehicle industry. For instance, Tesla, BYD, Toyota, and so on. However,
now I know that actually I have more options than just those in electric vehicle industries. And for
curiosity, I also searched about the global companies that is working in electric vehicle industry. I
am quite surprised that the top sale ranking list is quite different from what I was expected. Also,
there are many famous companies I have forgot. No wonder, the first and second largest EV seller
is Tesla and BYD. The third best seller is a Chinese company called SAIC-GM-Wuling. This
company sold approximately 450,000 EVs in 2021, which is about 75% and 50% of those of BYD
and Tesla, repectively. Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz ranked 4 to 6, respectively. I have
never put these European manufactures into my option due to lack of information expose here in
Japan. After the investigation, now I know that my choice is not limited to Tesla, BYD, and Toyota.
Actually, there are a lot more companies that are also doing a very good job in the electric motor
industry.