Hitachi Ltd. and Omron Corp. said Wednesday they have agreed to join hands in providing information technology-based factory automation systems.
The alliance is designed to combine Hitachi's information control system technology with Omron's wide-ranging control-systems equipment, the two companies said.
The companies said they will initially target food, pharmaceutical and cosmetics manufacturers as clients for the systems, starting in February.
They said they expect the business to produce annual sales of 10 billion yen in 2003.