Voice of Users

As a confection maker, Kagetsudo provides many different products to places all over the country. Normally, the product line up runs to about 120 items. Mr. Tomoyuki Nakamura, Head of the Honohara Factory added, “Convenience stores especially, according to season and sales performance, require a rapidly changing variety of products. At the company, in line with our business concept – ‘Speedy product development, quick market launch’ – we are always alert and responsive to customer needs. To ensure that production could keep up with these needs, in 2007, we started operating a new factory.”

The state-of-the-art facilities at the Honohara Factory meet stringent standards for food safety and enable Kagetsudo to respond to changing consumer tastes. Setting three targets – less than 2% production loss, 100% utilization, and less than one complaint per million production units, the company initiated the Change 2010 Project to achieve even higher levels of product quality.

To ensure product quality and safety, it is necessary to monitor each piece of equipment and inspect each product. When slips were used for keeping inspection records, for the entire factory, close to 400 separate pieces of paper were needed. Handwritten slips produced each day had to be filed and required storage space. And dependence on human judgment for inspection and assessment of any abnormality was inherently problematic because, in some instances, it was impossible to later understand the situation solely from the written records. To resolve this problem, the company investigated the feasibility of introducing a system where top priority was given to “Ease of use on production lines, capable of being by used anyone, enabling anyone to sustain the same high level of quality.” (Mr. Nakamura)

For example on the wrapping line, the management of the food freshness enhancer (an alcohol formulation) was changed: “Because it evaporates so fast, within two hours of opening, we have to use up each lot of freshness enhancer that is fed into the wrapping process. Now we enter the lot number and time in the CF-H1.” (Wrapping and Packaging Section Foreman Mr. Koichi Oi)

In addition, the outcome of inspection of wrapping for tiny holes, monitoring of thermocompression bonding temperature of the wrapping seal, and many other inspection results are entered in the CF-H1. At the production line, the inspector’s name, present in the chip embedded in the employee’s I.D. card, is recorded via the IC card reader built into the CF-H1. All the entered data are transferred to the server across the wireless LAN. Since the introduction of this integrated system, it has been possible to get a much more immediate grasp of the situation on the factory floor.

In the past, if a situation arose, the only way to understand what might have happened was to go through the employee reports and records. Now, from the system, the process supervisor receives immediate notification of abnormalities. And, as a failsafe, if the inspection schedule happens to be delayed, a warning message is shown on screen and a notification is simultaneously sent to the supervisor. This is useful for preventing gaps in the inspection process.

Besides functioning as an inspection system terminal, the CF-H1 is also used for the worksheet management system. In the past, employee attendance was logged as time of entry and departure by a reader at the factory gate. This has been changed to logging at each production line by the CF-H1. Now, at each place of work, it is possible to record employee presence, including exit and entry for breaks from work. This enables the keeping of more accurate data for time worked and this is locked in with the wage payment system.

“Before, I used to try and manage the break system using a paper-based system. But, with 30 people in a section, when I tried to manage the records on a single sheet of paper, the writing was so small that I couldn’t read it. Now, because times are recorded when the card is swiped, I don’t even have to calculate the times. With time recording taken care of by a CF-H1 stationed somewhere close to hand, I get the added of benefit of not being too busy to share a ‘Good morning!’ and ‘Goodbye’ with the guys on the line.” (Mixing and Baking Supervisor Mr. Koji Mawatari) Meanwhile, “Because we can count the operation time (time worked) in one minute units, we can schedule more finely tuned production plans.” (Mr. Nakamura)

The CF-H1 was released around the time when the design team started looking for a suitable terminal. It caught their eye. “As soon as I saw it, I just knew,” said Mr. Soichi Oka, WOM System Design Co., Ltd. Realization Team Director.”

“We can disinfect it by wiping with alcohol! While it was designed for healthcare, it struck us that food preparation requires similar levels of hygiene, so we proposed the CF-H1 to Kagetsudo.”

The built-in camera was also an important factor. Mr. Oka continued, ”The brief said ‘Instead of troubling the supervisor to personally inspect equipment repairs or product baking faults, it is preferable to take a photograph and send image data for faulty items.’ But, using an ordinary computer, it was necessary to take photos with a camera and then transfer the data to the computer. The bother of this process meant that workers on the production line were neglecting to do it. When the clients found out that the CF-H1 had a built-in camera, that was it, it was decided.”

Mr. Yasushi Mori, Planning and Development Leader added, “Of course, we were already using handy terminals for “read only” tasks such as checking shipments. But for inspection on the production line, we needed to enter data, and inputting via those small screens was too much trouble. They weren’t usable. With the CF-H1, it’s always possible to keep one on hand beside the production line, or take one along during inspection for on-the-spot data entry. Then, when we saw how large the screen was, and how data could be entered by touch... ‘There’s nothing else like this!’ We quickly decided it was the only option.”