Hideyuki Takaoka

Hideyuki Takaoka is a Director & Executive Officer and Deputy Head of the Production Division at Nippon Kouatsu Electric Co., Ltd. (NKE), a Japanese manufacturer of electrical equipment for the power industry. Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Obu, Aichi, near Nagoya, NKE supplies equipment to Japan’s major electric power companies as well as railway and electrical construction firms.

Before joining NKE in 2026, he spent nearly ten years at Benefit One, Japan’s leading employee benefits services company, where he worked as a B2B sales manager serving large corporate clients.

At NKE, he is responsible for production strategy, including the renewal of the company’s main factory, the optimization of its production bases in Japan, China, and Vietnam, and the promotion of AI and digital transformation in manufacturing.

As a Visiting Scholar at the US-Asia Technology Management Center, his research focuses on the transformation of the power infrastructure industry and on how companies can build sustainable competitive advantage amid these changes.