YKK Research & Development Centers

Product innovations developed by YKK’s Research and Development centers have served as the vehicle to propel the YKK Group to its position as a global leader in fastening technology. Like YKK R&D centers around the globe, the R&D Center at the YKK (U.S.A.) Inc. National Manufacturing Center in Macon, Georgia is uniquely different in that we go out into the field and visit our customers together with our sales and marketing group. Our R&D efforts are continuous. We work in tandem with our customers to develop the best manufacturing options for installing fasteners into their end-use goods. We understand that our fasteners are not end-use items in themselves; rather, they are critical components within our customer’s products.

The YKK Group has five research and development centers located strategically around the world to serve our valued customers. Our largest R&D center, located in Kurobe, Japan, focuses on Core Technology and Fundamental Research for applications across a broad spectrum of fastening markets. Our R&D center in Italy addresses fastener research to support the fashion industry, while our R&D center in Indonesia concentrates on raw materials research, as well as developing fasteners for price conscious markets. The R&D centers located within the USA and Taiwan focus on the development of high functioning fasteners for diverse markets such as the automotive, aerospace, military, medical, and industrial safety markets.

The R&D centers also develop lease machinery that can automate the attachment of a YKK^® fastener into a customer’s product on the customer’s factory floor, improving the quality of your final product as well as reducing your labor costs.

YKK’s Machinery & Engineering Division works closely with R&D to make their developments operational by designing the necessary manufacturing technologies, processes and tools necessary to economically manufacture these new products. The YKK Group’s Machinery & Engineering Group supplies machinery specialized for the Fastening Products and Architectural Products business groups to YKK Group factories all over the world by developing materials, developing machinery and equipment, and manufacturing machinery parts and components of machinery and equipment.