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Nisshin Seiki's Journey to Operational Excellence with Smart Craft

Nisshin Seiki Co., Ltd., located in Ota, Tokyo, has taken a significant leap towards digital transformation by adopting Smart Craft, a cloud-based process management and performance collection tool offered by Smart Craft Co., Ltd. This move has led to the impressive reduction of defect rates by half while enhancing work efficiency in the manufacturing department through real-time data utilization and elimination of paper processes.

Background of Implementation

While Nisshin Seiki has seen success in digital transformation within its indirect departments, the manufacturing sector had been reliant on paper-based operations for many years. As customer quality requirements intensified, various challenges arose in managing workload and utilizing data effectively. Responding to suggestions from on-site personnel, the company decided to adopt Smart Craft to address these issues directly.

Challenges Faced Due to Paper Usage

The reliance on paper was contributing to increasing workloads. Employees were printing, distributing, and collecting about 70 to 80 documents each day, along with a mandated requirement to store these documents for 16 years due to client regulations. This has raised serious concerns about physical storage space as a significant challenge.

Moreover, the time lag in data aggregation hampered improvement initiatives. On-site staff were recording data on paper, which was manually entered into Excel by indirect departments. Consequently, results could only be confirmed the following month, delaying investigations and corrective measures significantly.

Another pressing issue was the creation of a data management system that was overly reliant on individual personnel. Inventory management, for example, was handled by specific individuals' personal computers leading to fragmented information management. There was a pressing need for a unified system ensuring that everyone could access real-time data.

Deciding Factors for Smart Craft Adoption

Nisshin Seiki recognized the necessity to advance its digital transformation, yet they were aware that top-down initiatives often falter in gaining traction at the operational level. The decision to implement Smart Craft was catalyzed when on-site employees suggested its adoption as a practical solution to their challenges.

Following extensive evaluations comparing four products, the Nisshin Seiki team found that Smart Craft could manage everything from production planning to quality recording and inventory management in a single system. Its design emphasized ease of use, making it highly user-friendly. The implementation was swiftly facilitated with the support from Smart Craft, establishing it on the production floor within just one month.

Results Post-Implementation

The introduction of Smart Craft has dramatically improved efficiency at Nisshin Seiki, with employees actively leveraging data for enhanced productivity.

Significant Reduction in Defect Rates and Faster Improvement Cycles

Now that data entered on-site is reflected in real-time, the lag in data availability has been significantly reduced from a month to the same or the next day. This real-time capability allows for specific analyses regarding defect occurrences, leading to actionable insights that have halved the average defect rate compared to the previous fiscal year.

Considerable Reduction in Administrative Workload

The cumbersome process of transferring data from paper to Excel has been eliminated, leading to drastic reductions in the time needed for performance collection tasks. The efficiency gains are evident, as employees can now focus on more strategic tasks rather than tedious data entry activities.

Establishment of Proactive Improvement Culture

Since the staff selected the Smart Craft tool themselves, there is a strong sense of ownership over the data. This visibility into their performance metrics has fostered a culture of taking initiative, with employees motivated to drive improvements autonomously.

Voices from the Leadership

Hiroshi Nakamura, President of Nisshin Seiki
"The smooth onboarding of Smart Craft owes much to our employees' proactive suggestions rather than top-down directives. While we aim for efficiency through digital transformation, we also intend to maintain a hands-on perspective, ensuring we continually observe and engage with the production floor."

Makoto Kamiya, Factory Manager
"In the past, I was the one compiling and processing paper data, but with real-time reflections of input data, I can see improvements initiated almost immediately. We are now gearing up to integrate data across the entire factory, including equipment maintenance."

Ryota Asai, Production Technology Section Chief
"The speed at which data can be compiled and shared has significantly improved, with frequent requests for enhancements based on data insights from the floor. Thanks to thorough follow-ups, the implementation process has been seamless, and we plan to extend this to other factories next year."

Kazushi Nomura, Manufacturing Section Lead
"Having eliminated the wait for data aggregation, we now have clarity on defect patterns across product lines, allowing us to establish concrete action plans. Moving forward, we aim to automate quality recording in conjunction with measuring devices to enhance operational efficiency even further."

Future Prospects

Nisshin Seiki plans to extend the use of Smart Craft from its current factory to other locations, aiming for system integration across sites. Additionally, initiatives are underway to automate quality recording to minimize manual entry, implement monitoring of progress on an hourly basis via equipment linkage, and visualize real-time achievements through large screens within the factory. Ultimately, they aspire to establish a fully interconnected factory, where production planning, equipment maintenance, and operations are integrated through data.

About Smart Craft

Smart Craft is a cloud-based manufacturing execution system (MES) that digitizes the management of processes, quality, and inventory on the manufacturing floor. By leveraging mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, it unifies the management of work directives, production records, quality inspections, and inventory data in real-time.

This integrated setup eliminates the previously isolated records of production, quality, and inventory, discarding analog processes and redundant data entries. The aggregated data becomes highly actionable through AI capabilities, enhancing not only QCD on the shop floor but also serving as a decision-making foundation to support the overall management of manufacturing operations.

For further details, visit Smart Craft's service website.

Company Overview of Smart Craft

Founded with the mission of creating new standards for manufacturing industries, Smart Craft Co., Ltd. provides solutions that leverage technology to promote smart manufacturing and improve labor practices. The company is featured in the 2024 edition of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry's white paper on manufacturing.

• - Company Name: Smart Craft Co., Ltd.
• - Location: 1-51-1 Hatsudai, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
• - CEO: Fumiya Uke
• - Founded: June 15, 2021
• - Business Scope: Development and provision of the cloud-based process management and performance collection system "Smart Craft."
• - Website: Smart Craft Corporate Site