OMRON Corporation, a leading automation company with a wide range of businesses, including control equipment, electronic components, and healthcare, with a focus on factory automation, is building a traceability system to visualize factory operating status as part of its efforts to identify the scope of impact caused by failures that occur at manufacturing sites and to improve on-site work operations.DataSpider DataSpider International and existing distributed systems, into an appropriate format and smoothly data integration with the higher-level traceability system.
Customer Issues
We want to build a traceability system to visualize information related to improving factory quality.
Benefits of implementation
Factories including partner companies
global
Traceability
system Build
Even in different environments at each site
DataSpider International
Flexible collaboration
Visualization of the site Therefore,
On-site improvement activities and development
Also used for feedback
Background: The establishment of a traceability system is urgently needed to quickly grasp the situation when a failure occurs.
Device & Module Solutions Company
Chief of Quality Planning Department, Quality Management Department
Mr. Toshitaka Nishimoto
OMRON Corporation has adopted the corporate motto "Let's improve our lives and create a better society" and has been creating social needs to realize a better society. The Device & Module Solutions Company (DMS) is the company's founding business, the electronic components business. The company produces electronic components for a variety of industries, including electric mobility, eSports, the energy industry, and semiconductor inspection equipment, and has expanded its production facilities around the world, including its own production bases and those of partner companies outside the OMRON Group.
The company's electronic components are mainly produced using automated assembly machines that mass-produce thousands of units per hour, meaning any issues could affect many customers. "In order to minimize damage, we needed to establish a traceability environment that would collect and provide feedback on on-site information so that we could address any defects immediately," explains Toshitaka Nishimoto, a manager in the Quality Planning Department of the Quality Management Division at the company. While the company did have a system for recording on-site information, it was primarily done on paper or in Excel. "Even having experienced members formulate hypotheses and then finding and analyzing the data is a difficult task. Even at overseas factories, simply gathering the data required a significant amount of time," explains Koichi Watanabe, a manager in the same department.
introduction Even in environments individually optimized for each site
DataSpider International enables flexible data integration
It is important for the traceability system to accurately identify changes in procured materials, development processes, people, equipment, and other factors that could lead to defects, and system requirements were refined based on a packaged traceability system. However, at the work sites where the data originates, each preferred tool, such as Excel or Access, and the environments varied greatly at each of the more than 50 bases, including overseas bases and partner companies.
"Initially, we considered installing iPads on the production line to promote standardization, but each site had its own unique management methods, and a standardized tool on the latest devices wasn't necessarily what was needed," says Nishimoto.
Device & Module Solutions Company
Chief of Quality Planning Department, Quality Management Department
Mr. Koichi Watanabe
They turned their attention to data integration platform DataSpider International as a means of smoothly collecting information from the field. "Even in fields where operations are still done on paper, they should at least be able to enter the data into Excel. We thought that if we used an ETL solution with an Excel adapter, we could automatically collect data by attaching it to an email," said Watanabe.
DataSpider International uses a GUI for creating data integration flows, and the processes required for data input and output, as well as conversion and processing, can be achieved by dragging and dropping icons, making it the ideal environment for in-house development. "We thought that if we created the base for data integration flow and deployed it in a way that only required minor changes when deploying it horizontally to each base, we could fully utilize it even in an in-house format," said Watanabe.
Effect: A traceability system that is useful for factory quality control
Strong support from DataSpider International
Currently, the system has been deployed at three bases in Japan (Kumamoto, Tottori, and Okayama), and overseas bases in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China, and plans are underway to migrate from the initial Excel-based operation to a distributed system for Malaysia and Indonesia. Depending on the factory environment and size, information is collected in a variety of ways, including input on iPads, Excel, and existing individually constructed distributed systems, and data is expected to be collected from over 50 bases in the end.
The collected data is used in a variety of ways, beyond just traceability. "Initially, we collected information to trace when something happened, but over the past few years, the quality of work on site has improved significantly, and major problems no longer occur. Now, the purpose has changed to include on-site improvement activities and feedback to development," says Nishimoto.
The main information obtained from the site is the product number of manufacturing order information from the production management system, various information related to quality changes, as well as equipment measurement values and inspection record information. "In addition to Excel email attachments, we also use file triggers to automatically collect and link CSV files extracted from distributed systems. With partner companies, we collect data from Excel email attachments, so there is a time lag, but DataSpider International is useful for connecting the data well," says Watanabe.
data integration image
In actual operation, various ingenuity is put into resolving operational issues that arise from time to time, such as DataSpider International 's automated processing, which attaches errors output from the database to an email and sends them to the administrator. "If we had used Java or VB, it would probably have been difficult to respond so flexibly. Thanks to DataSpider International handling the connecting processing, we have been able to maintain a stable environment for data integration," says Watanabe with high praise.
We would like to further expand our business by expanding the scope of our prospective partners and the equipment we acquire.
The system is currently being expanded into Japan, China, and other parts of Asia, but the company is also considering expanding the traceability system to Italy and other parts of Europe.
"We would like to actively pursue further expansion by increasing the number of partner companies and expanding the range of equipment we acquire to meet the needs of the field," says Watanabe enthusiastically.
OMRON Corporation
- location
Shiokoji-dori Horikawa-higashii, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto City - overview
As a leading automation company, the company operates a wide range of businesses, including control equipment centered on factory automation, electronic components, social systems such as automatic ticket gates at stations and power conditioners for solar power generation, and healthcare, and provides products and services in over 130 countries around the world.
- The content of this case study is current as of the time of the interview. The content of this case study may change without notice.