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Porter Prize 2025
-- Award-Winning Companies and Businesses

The following are summaries of the reasons for the awards (in no particular order).

eWeLL Co., Ltd.

eWeLL provides support services for home-visit nursing stations. A distinguishing feature of its competitive strategy is its continued focus on the home-visit nursing market, rather than the larger home-visit care market--which was said to be four times the size when the company was founded. Enhancing home-visit nursing services is crucial for Japan's aging society, yet many nursing stations are small-scale businesses with a closure rate exceeding the national average for SMEs.

eWeLL contributes to the success of these stations by digitalizing and streamlining nurses' daily administrative tasks--such as charting, insurance claims, and creating nursing care plans and reports--thereby increasing the number of patient visits per day and improving care quality. The company began specifically with the digitalization of daily nursing records and the introduction of electronic medical records, which serve as the foundation for automating and improving the efficiency of related processes such as generating nursing plans and reports. This approach contrasts with many service providers that started from the insurance claim process.

Home-visit nursing involves complex systems--medical insurance, long-term care insurance, and sometimes disability welfare programs--each with frequent legal and procedural changes. By specializing in this field and accumulating deep expertise, eWeLL has created a highly user-friendly system that incorporates this knowledge and delivers real value.

The company operates its own sales and customer support center, offering not only technical assistance but also consulting on nursing station management. About 20% of all employees are assigned to the support center, which both assists customers and feeds insights back into the company's monthly product updates.

Fujikura Ltd. - Information & Communication Business Division

Fujikura's Information & Communication Business Division focuses on the manufacturing and sale of optical fiber cables. Its distinctive strategy lies in creating and specializing in high-value-added areas based on proprietary product and manufacturing technologies.

As Japan's optical fiber market matured, the company made a bold strategic shift: it completely withdrew from traditional optical cable production (such as slotted-core and loose-tube types) and specialized in cables using its internally developed intermittently bonded ribbon fiber. It also shifted its target market from Japan to overseas.

This new cable structure is ultra-high-count, thin, dense, and lightweight, enabling significant reductions in both manufacturing and installation costs compared to conventional products. Fujikura offers all related products--optical fibers, components, fusion splicers, and fiber-based application products--which together support the performance and competitiveness of its new cable design.

In sales, Fujikura emphasizes total cost reduction for customers and captures value through appropriate pricing that reflects the savings created. Its wholly owned sales subsidiaries provide comprehensive wiring solutions--not only cables but also components, equipment, and even installation advice and services.

Fujikura has successfully penetrated the U.S. hyperscale data center market and is expanding in Europe, especially among major telecommunications carriers and railway operators.

By differentiating itself from low-cost competitors and avoiding price competition, the division achieves profitability levels well above the industry average.

SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd. - SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions Co., Ltd.

SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions, a key subsidiary of SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd., leads the group's core business in semiconductor manufacturing equipment and has maintained the world's No.1 share in wafer cleaning equipment since 1999. Cleaning is a critical process that removes microscopic particles generated during semiconductor fabrication and directly impacts yield and product quality.

The company's strength lies in its advanced surface treatment technology and its unique capability to integrate multiple technologies and know-how, resulting in exceptional cleaning performance. Moreover, SCREEN's equipment influences the overall throughput of front-end semiconductor processes. Cleaning is performed repeatedly before and after various steps, and multiple cleaning systems are used on a single line--accounting for as much as 30% of the front-end process.

While other manufacturers' equipment is used before and after cleaning steps, SCREEN's expertise enables it to provide optimal solutions tailored to the material, shape, temperature, and required time of particles to be removed.

Despite the semiconductor market's volatility, SCREEN maintains stability through a semi-fabless structure: key components are produced in-house, while others are outsourced and assembled/tested by suppliers in SCREEN's own clean rooms. Because customers demand customized equipment, SCREEN modularizes product structures and adopts a semi-order-made approach--standardizing most parts while customizing key modules. This enables the company to flexibly respond to demand fluctuations, improve delivery and quality control, and ensure efficient and reliable maintenance services.

Rather than selling equipment through intermediaries, SCREEN maintains direct sales and service relationships with customers, enabling it to continuously meet their needs and build long-term trust.