Sodick, Inc. has brought on board a new General Manager, Kevin Yamada. Yamada has been with Sodick’s R&D Company, Sodick America, for the past 14 years. He was recently promoted to general manager and has moved from San Jose, CA to Schaumburg, IL. Yamada earned his B.S. in Sociology from Hosei University in Tokyo Japan. During his last year at the University he received an international scholarship to University of California, Davis for one year.  This involved moving to California. During this time he enjoyed living in the U.S. and upon graduation sought out a position working for an overseas sales department for a machine stamping company that he remained at for one year.  

He then made the move to Sodick America. He was on a four person team that was responsible for establishing Sodick America from scratch. Involved in the start-up was Yamada, Yuji Kaneko (current Sodick Headquarters CEO/president), Ted Toyonaga (current executive officer of advanced research at Sodick Headquarters) and Koji Yoneda (who was the CTO at Sodick America until last year, and is now the CEO/president of Sodick America).  

Yamada started out at Sodick America as the corporate secretary, who was in charge of the entire administration process (Accounting, HR, Customer Relations and R&D), and quickly progressed to the companies CFO. He held the title of CFO but remained very much involved in the R&D that took place at the facility, including the latest Sodick Motion Controller.

Yamada has moved to the Chicago area along with his wife Hiroko and three children; Karen (12 yrs), Yuhki (9 yrs) and Reina (5 yrs). The family is looking forward to the new experience and the children are all excited for their first snowfall, since they have never seen snow.

Sodick’s President, Dave Thomas stated, “Kevin Yamada will be a valuable asset to our organization, he already knows the products and market well and will be able to transition very easily.  I look forward to working with him in the years to come.”