On April 22, OSG (Toyokawa City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan) opened to the press its NEO Shinshiro Plant, its core base for "ultra-high-mix low-volume production" through the smart factory concept.
This core plant, which began operations in May 2020, produces cemented carbide drills, cemented carbide taps, high speed steel drills, and high speed steel end mills. Under the slogan "Zero-One Factory," the plant features human-robot collaboration, a smart factory production site, and an office environment that realizes diversity.
Chairman Norio Ishikawa explains how the NEO Shinshiro Plant was established. The former Shinshiro Plant was the catalyst for the company's development from a Japanese tap manufacturer to a global cutting manufacturer. Although we were able to expand globally, there were times when the production methods and technologies that were successful at the time were not always positive. There was also a sense of crisis as the huge town factory grew even larger. Therefore, a project was initiated to revamp production methods and management through digitalization, promoting IoT and digitalization in the OSG style. The NEO Shinshiro Plant is a factory that puts OSG's IoT and digitalization into practice.
President Nobuaki Osawa emphasized at the press conference that the company is strengthening its micro-precision machining. The company's mainstay is the automotive industry, which currently accounts for 50% of the company's business. In its mid-term management plan, which started this year under the slogan of "becoming an essential player in the world," the company has identified micro-precision machining as a growth area for the carbon neutral era, and has set the final stage of 202 In the final stage of the plan, from 2028 to 2030, the company intends to increase the share of this field to more than 30%. President Osawa specifically sees these fields as 5G, semiconductors, precision molds, medical, robots, and mobility.
The NEO Shinshiro Plant, which is realizing high-mix low-volume production through the use of smart factory technology, is notable for its thorough digitalization, "visualization," and collaboration between humans and robots. Large monitors were installed on the production floor and in the office to share information such as the operating rate of each processing machine, production schedule and production status, and flow numbers. At the production site, where many of the company's own processing facilities are installed, some of the machines are operated unmanned by cooperating robots that perform everything from feeding to discharging, and processing machines are used to realize "weekend multi-product production".
The facility environment was designed to achieve diversity. The office space is free-addressable, with no restrictions on department or position. In the business library area, eight monitors are used for centralized visualization of production. A clock displaying the local time of each location was installed to foster a global sense of time.
