For many years, the Japanese mold industry has maintained its position as the world's largest mold country and mold powerhouse. At the peak of 1998, its total mold output reached 1,8945.4 million yen. However, in the 10 years since then, although the annual output value has either increased or decreased, the overall situation has stagnated. Until now, it has not recovered or exceeded the 1998 level. The number of mold manufacturing enterprises has also been decreasing year by year.

Due to the impact of the global financial crisis, especially the slump in the use of molds in the auto industry and the semiconductor industry, the output value of the Japanese mold industry in January 2009 fell by 13.9% compared with the same period of last year. At present, many companies have orders for only 20 to 40% of their best years. Many factories are underemployed and only start working for 3 to 4 days a week. Some have started to close down, and the number of companies has decreased month by month.

Countermeasures Faced with this situation, people in the Japanese mold industry are very worried about the brain drain, especially worries that some older and experienced personnel are going abroad. The brain drain will bring disadvantages to the future development of the Japanese industry. How to actively respond to the current difficulties has become a major issue for the Japanese mold industry. The Japanese mold industry and even the relevant government departments have already considered many aspects of their mold industry's future development.

From the perspective of the people, the development directions that Japan has proposed are mainly the following six aspects. The planning in each aspect is detailed and informative for China to learn from.

1 Use as many new technologies as possible to increase the level of digitization and informationization;

2 Exploiting new fields for molds, such as various new energy sources, new materials, and medical and aerospace fields;

3 extension mold industry chain;

4 carry out diversification;

5 update knowledge;

6 do a good job in development and production, education and research.

At the government level, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan has organized the “Study Committee for Strategic Materials Technology” and recently issued a “Strategy Technology Strategy” that is a guideline. The goal of implementing this technology strategy is clear: "To grasp the vitality of the world's manufacturing industry by grasping the important technology of the material."