Farewell party in March 2010

Professor Masaru Nakano’s Business Engineering Laboratory (BE Lab), with Professor Richard Greene and Assistant Professor Nobuaki Minato, conducts research on various business problems using methods in which humanities and sciences are combined. Ms. Tomomi Nonaka, one of the six master’s students in BE Lab to graduate in March 2010, won the Best SDM Performance award. BE Lab started in 2008 with a small number of students and has grown to six doctoral students and 23 master’s students. Almost all of the young students without work experience major in science and technology, while many students with work experience major in social science.

Research in 2010

Research Topics in BE Lab.

BE Lab research focuses on three areas; social structure design, supply chain, and business system design, as shown on the left. Using multi-agent simulation, a computational general equilibrium model, and mathematical optimization, we are conducting research on quantitatively visualizing problems in society and business and the effectiveness of the solutions.

Internationalization

Japan is proud to have the world’s best elemental technologies in electronics, automobile, construction, machine tools and the environment, but we are starting to lose business competitions all over the world.  It is not a stretch to say that a crisis is looming. One of the biggest reasons for Japan’s crisis is because both the public and private sectors are reluctant to embrace internationalization.  Therefore, the internationalization of university education is an urgent matter.
Professor Nakano has been involved in various international joint research projects for more than 15 years, and is currently involved in the IMS2020 Project (Sustainable Manufacturing) in the EU/IF7 Program, a joint research project with Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the US. The lab is becoming more international; during the last year, doctoral students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Politechnico di Milan joined the lab for this project as well as students from the Netherlands, Morocco, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Peru. The lab has also benefited from the presence of Richard Greene, the American professor. We’ve sent Japanese students to the Netherlands and France to study as well. 

Professor Masaru Nakano

The specialties of Professor Nakano, former principal researcher at Toyota Central R&D Laboratories, are sustainable manufacturing, environment-friendly supply chains, business process reengineering, and consumer behavior. He has broad experience in international joint research, mainly with western countries and isresponsible for international relations at SDM.