An employee at Kyocera America Inc. performs work with a microscope at the Kearny Mesa plant, which manufactures ceramic components designed to shield electronic parts from heat, pressure and abrasion.

Kyocera Corp., a multinational company with subsidiaries in San Diego and Tijuana, teaches the doctrine that spirituality belongs not only in the home or places of worship but also in the workplace. The motto of a modern Buddhist priest, “Respect the Divine and Love People,” is taught at some 160 Kyocera subsidiaries girdling the globe.

The priest’s name is Daiwa, but he is far better known by his secular name, Kazuo Inamori. In 1959, Inamori founded the Kyoto Ceramic Co. Ltd., with 28 staff members. He guided the company under the Kyocera name into a position of worldwide prominence, stressing that the practice of environmentalism is necessary to show proper respect.

In Kearny Mesa, Kyocera America Inc. manufactures highly durable ceramic components designed to shield electronic parts from heat, pressure and abrasion. The company is now building carports on its parking lot that will be covered with a 251-kilowatt solar photovoltaic generating skin that can power 98 percent of the plant’s electrical needs, says Jay Scovie, manager of corporate relations. This division also has won city of San Diego waste reduction and processing awards on multiple occasions.

At Campus Point near La Jolla, where Kyocera Wireless Corp. churns out millions of cellular phones, special four-unit panels hold circuit card assemblies in place as hundreds of tiny components are soldered upon them in a multi-step process configuring the electronic elements of the phones. The fiber-reinforced panels, backed with gold plating, are recycled, both for the recapture of the precious metals and for environmental reasons.

In Tijuana, electronics ceramics and cell phones both are being manufactured, along with a 35-megawatt solar panel assembly scheduled to formally begin operations on Dec. 10. Kyocera Mexicana has its own waste water treatment plant, which in 2000 garnered a national environmental award presented by President Vicente Fox.

Kyocera International Inc., based in San Diego, is the holding company for four subsidiaries in the San Diego-Tijuana area, and one each in Scottsdale, Ariz. (solar); Irvine (Tycom cutting tools); Somerset, N.J. (cameras); and Vancouver, Wash. (structural ceramics).

A small futuristic wireless communication subsidiary, Kyocera Telecommunications Research Division, is housed at the Kyocera Wireless Corp. at Campus Point.

Overseeing from San Diego the sprawling, 5,900-employee North American group is Rodney Lanthorne, who, as a public accountant for Coopers & Lybrand, assisted Kyocera in 1976 to register in the United States as a publicly traded stock company. He joined Kyocera’s staff in 1979 to help devise a strategy of “glocalization” — that is, being a global company operated locally. “Glocalization” is another important tenet of the corporate philosophy. Inamori appointed Lanthorne as the Kyocera International president in 1986 — the first American to head a Japanese subsidiary.

Globally, Kyocera reports net sales of $10.96 billion during the 2004 fiscal year ended March 31, an increase of 6.6 percent over the preceding fiscal year. Company profit was $655 million, up 65.4 percent. Kyocera International, which has its offices at the Kyocera America plant in Kearny Mesa, recorded North American group sales of about $2 billion. Kyocera International does not provide revenue breakdowns for the individual subsidiaries. Kyocera International president Lanthorne reports employment within his North American group, which includes a division in India that reports to Kyocera Wireless, increased 4,600 to 5,900 in the past 18 months. The growth was paced by gains at Kyocera Wireless and Kyocera Mexicana.

Inamori and Lanthorne refined a decision-making system in which Kyocera executives are “double-checked, not second-guessed.” While Lanthorne is in charge of administrative, financial, legal and corporate communications for the group, each of the operating divisions under him also report to product managers, typically located at the company’s global headquarters in Kyoto, Japan.

“Glocalization” is an evolving phenomenon. Even the custom of having product managers based in Japan someday may change. Tsuyoshi Mano became president of Kyocera Wireless Inc. after serving as the point man in Japan for the acquisition of the former Qualcomm facility and later participating as part of the executive team at Campus Point.

Mano, who plans to return to Japan after a local successor is identified, suggests that because San Diego is a capital in the telecommunications industry, product supervision ought to be located here. If his suggestion is followed, that would mean the Japanese-based wireless division — which also oversees operations in China — would receive guidance from San Diego, quite a turnaround in the global relationship.

Saul Garcia-Huerta, a native of Tijuana, was appointed this year as president of Kyocera Mexicana. Garcia, an industrial relations specialist, worked under Kyocera America President Bob Whisler when the majority of Tijuana’s work was in the ceramics field. After Garcia spearheaded a project to make the factory ready for wireless telephone production, Kyocera Mexicana became a separately administered subsidiary.

Like Lanthorne, Garcia is the first native of his country to head a Japanese subsidiary. Kyocera Mexicana employs about 2,000 people in the cellular, ceramics, and solar operations. In a structure that mirrors Lanthorne’s relationship with Japan, Garcia is “double checked,” depending on the product, by the presidents of Kyocera America, Kyocera Wireless or Kyocera Solar. All in turn answer to Lanthorne as well as to their product managers in Japan.

The Tijuana operation has been growing in response to price pressure on Kyocera cellular phones by competitors whose workers are in such low-wage markets as India and China. While Kyocera guards its wage scales for competitive reasons, the U.S. Department of Labor estimated in 2002 that a typical production line worker in the United States earned $21.33 per hour compared to $2.38 in Mexico. In China and India, wages of less than $1 an hour are common.

Whatever hourly wages Kyocera pays in Mexico, these are supplemented by one subsidized meal in the company cafeteria and free transportation between the factory and the worker’s neighborhood.

As the Tijuana facility built up, the number of production line jobs in the Campus Point facility dropped from between 1,700 and 1,800 to between 1,100 and 1,200 today, reports Harsh Karande, vice president for operations. At the same time, higher paying jobs in research and development, engineering, sales and finance increased, resulting in Kyocera Wireless retaining about the same number of employees overall, says Kyocera Wireless spokesman John Chier.

Karande says Kyocera Wireless chose Tijuana, rather than a lower paying area, because the Tijuana factories are close to San Diego, limiting the time it takes to get products from factory to market — even with all the post-9/11 border crossing controls.

Fast, flexible turnaround is one of Kyocera’s selling points to such cell phone providers as Verizon and Virgin Mobile. Another Mexican advantage, says Garcia, is that products manufactured there come under the free trade agreements that Mexico has with 42 countries, including the United States and most of Latin America.

Although less price sensitive than cell phones, Kyocera America, the ceramics manufacturer, also benefits from having factory facilities in Tijuana. Solar manufacturing, by contrast, is starting up in that city, so there will be no such trans-border displacement. In fact, the Mexican solar assembly operation will spur jobs in San Diego — not only in a regional sales office to be located here, but also for installers in both construction and retrofitting. The demand for solar products in California outpaces supply, and Mexico, also hungry for solar energy, has prepurchased the factory’s first month’s production to be used at railroad crossings, says Garcia.

Lanthorne says side-by-side economies that trade with each other tend to create more wealth than either would independently. Illustrating this, Garcia says many Mexicans who work in maquiladoras spend their money in the United States, where some groceries, shoes and other products are cheaper than those found in Mexico. The higher the profits from the maquiladora plant, the more money available for reinvestment for the development of new products.

Kyocera executives favor San Diego production lines for newer products that may need technological wrinkles ironed out, while opting to manufacture in Tijuana proven products with steady, long-range production schedules.

Kyocera America President Whisler says a substantial number of jobs will remain in the United States, not only because Inamori taught that it is best to operate facilities within the market areas that use them, but also because sales from the U.S. defense industry comprise 50 percent of Kyocera America’s business. In part because of security reasons, the U.S. Defense Department insists upon domestic manufacturing.

With Americans, Japanese and Mexicans working together, a hybrid corporate culture is emerging in North America. Lanthorne recalls that initially “there were certain Japanese practices that were brought over here. We wore a blue smock or jacket. ...To facilitate communications we had an open-office environment and a lot of people didn’t like that because it is a status symbol to have a separate office, but the whole ideas is to break down barriers”

“We would get together each morning for a general meeting and then we would have exercises. If you go to Japan, it is still done by most companies. We (in Kyocera International) kind of dropped the practice. We have a couple of operations that still use it... For most of the new hires who came in here, that was the thing that was a shock to them. I had one guy who told me he thought he was on an aircraft carrier.”

Whisler says Kyocera America has reduced the morning exercise routine to about ten yo-shos, “which is basically knee bends and an arm raise — and I don’t think anyone has an issue with that at all. We used to go through two to three exercises but it would last twice as long.”

In Tijuana, “we used to do the morning exercises, but as you can tell,” says Garcia, pausing to pat his ample girth for effect, “we gave up. It is not really well accepted by the people. They are embarrassed. We don’t do that. I remember when people would drive by Kyocera and point and laugh, and people were affected; they didn’t want to be the joke of the community.”

Private offices are perhaps more important in Mexico than in the United States, Garcia says, because “in Mexico, the culture calls for the patrón,” but he added that he has adjusted to the custom.

Whisler, who came up through the sales division, enjoys open offices because he is able to hear what is going on, and says other people also enjoy the camaraderie. In sales, particularly, he says, there’s something electric when someone exults, “I just made a million-dollar sale!”