Aiming to strengthen production capacity yet further
Demands as regards the maneuverability and environmental performance of motor vehicles are growing ever more complex, and manufacturers of automotive components are being called on more than ever before to provide high-performance, high-quality products at low prices.
Production engineering has an essential role to play in this regard. With our 60 production bases in 19 countries all over the world, it is important for AISIN to standardize our production methods worldwide and to train staff who are able to raise our production engineering capacity in every corner of the world. In order further to strengthen our production capacity and to foster production engineering staff, Aisin Seiki set up the Production Engineering Center in September 2007.
A major base for production engineering of the Aisin Group
The various functions relating to production engineering were previously scattered among factories in different locations, the head office, the R&D center, and laboratories, but by bringing them all together in the Production Engineering Center we have become able to raise the level of our production engineering and create new technology that oversteps the barriers between different divisions.
The Production Engineering Center currently groups together around 550 production engineers and mechanical plant engineers from the divisions involved in the design and production of equipment, metal dies and plastic dies. However, in the future we hope to turn it into an even large center for production technology that will support the Group as a whole, with a staff complement of between 800 and 1,000 including employees from all the companies in the Group.
We also hope that the Production Engineering Center will play a role as a focal point for joint projects embracing design, production engineering and procurement with the aim of developing new products for the future.
Aiming toward the construction of a global production system
Aisin has rapidly stepped up overseas production in order to respond to demand from automobile manufacturers all over the world.
However, the conditions needed for maintenance of facilities are by no means always readily available overseas. For example, the facilities may be located a long way from their manufacturer or employees at a new production base may have inadequate experience of production. This means that it is not easy to achieve the same stable production as in Japan.
Under these conditions AISIN is tackling the development and introduction of simple and slim production lines with a view to achieving the target of installing production lines that can be adequately maintained by engineers with less than three years experience, so that adequate maintenance and inspections can be carried out at overseas bases.
The Production Engineering Center will be a hub of activities aimed at accelerating the development of such facilities. A quarter of all production lines are currently produced inside the company, but we intend to raise this rate to a half in the future.
Production lines scheduled for introduction in factories inside and outside Japan will be assembled at the Production Engineering Center, where they will be put into trial operation. Products will be manufactured and subjected to quality inspections. After that, they well be moved to their permanent locations. thus we can reduce losses occurring at the start-up of production and the costs involved in preparing for production.