TOTOFOLDER MANUFACTURING

Practicing "being kind to people."

The basis of Toto Folder Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is to be kind to people. It is to practice and give form to invisible "kindness." The goal is to develop a machine through listening to the voices of the workplace and thinks about the people who use it. It is to propose systems to solve issues by understanding the customer's business challenges. It is to think about the people we work together with and to cooperate each other to pursue “Monodukuri”. We are proud to be the leading manufacturer of linen finishing equipment in Japan. Moving forward, we will contribute to the world even more widely. To that end, every one of us will think about kindness, and keep asking ourselves what we should do. We will aspire to be a company that is chosen by many customers and society by acting based on mutual trust.

History of TOTOFOLDER

  • Wishes and needs of the workers of the linen industry... For us, their voice was the very starting point of development of our folders.

    TOTO Maintenance, which is the predecessor of the TOTOFOLDER MANUFACTURING, was established in 1968, right at the dawn of the linen supply machinery. Many of the folders at the time were made in Europe and the U.S., they often malfunction, the manuals as well as the text on the operation panels were all in English, and thus the machines were far from user-friendly. Our maintenance specialists would go to the site and find people complaining, because the foreign-made machines did not match the actual needs of industrial sites in Japan, and the folding process was too cumbersome. To meet these requests, brothers Taiji and Yozo Maejima started developing their own folders.

  • After a long process of trial and error, they created their first domestically produced folder.

    The effort required much trial and error, and they were working in a small workshop they made in front of a house they were renting, using barely any production equipment, but still striving to create a high quality folding machine. The folder for towels and diapers was completed in 1972 and was equipped with a ground-breaking function, something that no machine had had before it – a function of instantaneously measuring the size of the cloth fed into the machine before folding it. After the folding machine for bed sheets was accomplished, the TOTO-made folders started to attract attention at the nationwide exhibitions, etc., resulting in the machines being delivered to increasingly more clients.

  • Folding machines evolving from one era to the next.

    Strongly supported by the voices of the people at the frontline of the industry, folding machines became an indispensable part of the linen supply plants. By now, each and every linen supply plant uses some sort of folding machine. And although over 50 years have passed since we developed our first folder, the machines made at the initial stage right after the company was established are still being used at various sites today. On the other hand, as during this period the linen supply industry has made a substantial progress, today there is a great diversity in the linen products handled and quality requirements have become much stricter than they used to be. And to meet these new requirements, folding machines are still evolving.

  • The challenge never ends.

    In the long-continued process of developing new products to respond to the voices of our customers, by now, we have amassed almost 60 patents (including pending ones). Quite often the endeavor takes us into unknown areas, where we need to take up challenges in the fields and industries not related to the linen supply. And we have always tried to contribute to the increase in efficiency of management from the point of view of folding needs. If there is anything you wish to fold in your plant, please contact us as we might be able to help.