Nihon Kohden, a Japan-based precision medical products and services company, has opened a new technical support facility in South Whitehall Township.
The 6,000-square-foot facility on Pond Road will work with Nihon Kohden’s Irvine, Calif., U.S. headquarters as a technical support call center for North and South America.
Initially, the company plans to hire 12 people to man the call center, but the facility could grow to 50 people, including technicians and nurse executives.
Wilson Constantine, CEO of Nihon Kohden America, said the company was attracted to the Lehigh Valley because of its proximity to a large number of its customers, but also because of the strong educational resources in the region.
He cited Lehigh University as having graduates with the engineering skill sets that will be needed for many of the positions it seeks to fill.
“While our new [South Whitehall] facility will initially serve as a second U.S. technical support call center … we will have the ability to add other functions in the future as customer needs dictate,” Constantine said.
Eddie Tanaka, operations officer and president of Nihon Kohden of Tomioka, Japan, said the company, which was founded in 1951, is considered one of the leading manufacturers of medical electronic equipment in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
The U.S. has been a strong growth area for the company.
“We saw double-digit growth in the U.S. last year and we expect the same this year,” he told Lehigh Valley Business.
Constantine noted that by having headquarters on the West Coast and support on the East Coast, Nihon Kohden will provide 24-hour-a-day customer support, which will help bolster that growth.
