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Last month, a small delegation from the city of Noblesville traveled to Japan to visit SMC Corp. and Toyota Automated Logistics, two companies that have chosen to make our city home.
If you own a business, you already understand why we went. Your best partners don’t stay because you send an email a few times a year. They stay because you show up, stay in touch and make them feel valued. The same is true in economic development, except the stakes are higher.
These two companies alone represent $400 million in combined private investment and more than 1,500 jobs in Noblesville. Those are engineers, manufacturing workers and logistics professionals buying homes across central Indiana, sending kids to our schools and spending money at the businesses you own.
None of that happened overnight, either. Indiana has more than 70,000 jobs supported by our relationship with Japan and the largest Japanese investment per capita of any state in the country. That foundation was built over four decades by people across central Indiana who made this region worth choosing. We all stand beside a fire we didn’t start. Every generation has to decide whether they’re willing to keep it going.
We went to Japan because that fire needs tending right now. Any company with global operations is navigating a complicated environment: tariffs, shifting supply chains and uncertainty about where to invest resources. At the same time, artificial intelligence is changing how manufacturing and logistics work, and it’s changing fast. Both SMC and Toyota Automated Logistics are investing in those technologies, and both are doing it in a way that prioritizes people, not just automation. These are the kind of partners any region would want, and Noblesville is doubling down on them because the moment demands it.
What confirmed that decision is how natural the partnership between these companies and central Indiana really is. The Japanese approach to business is rooted in long-term thinking, in-person trust, pride in craft and a genuine concern for the people behind the product. Those values sound like an echo because they’re the same values that built Noblesville and communities like it across Indiana. That common ground is the reason this relationship has lasted decades and the reason it has room to grow.
The people who built central Indiana before us kept this fire burning for generations. They made it a place worth choosing. Our job, all of our jobs, is to throw another log on for the next one.•
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Jensen is mayor of Noblesville. Davis is president and Smith is vice president of the Noblesville City Council.
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