The electrodeposition department, of course, was faced with the challenge of having to assign work skills to a specific person. Our traditional approach has been to create one-of-a-kind products with specifications that differ from customer to customer. The company's ability to respond to each customer's needs has been highly evaluated. On the other hand, within the company, detailed specifications and inspection items for each customer were often known only to the worker in charge, and the old-fashioned craftsman style has continued until recently.
It is reassuring to have a member of the team you can absolutely rely on. However, there were also disadvantages, such as the time and effort required to ask the person in charge of each work process for clarifications, or the work being delayed when the person in charge was not available. Overall, the fact that much of the work was shared manually and on paper also led to human error.
Although it is difficult to see from outside the company, if there is something that needs to be done to deliver higher quality products to our customers, we must not overlook it. Riding the wave of DX promotion in the world, the DX of the electrodeposition department was fully advanced with the relocation to the Chiba Plant.

Various measures have been introduced in the electrodeposition department with a focus on paperlessDX The digitalization of manufacturing instructions, for example, has been introduced. One example is the digitization of manufacturing instructions. Information that used to be held by the person in charge is now put into data and shared via tablet terminals. A system has been established whereby special specifications for each customer can be reproduced no matter who is in charge of the work. In addition to improving operational efficiency, this system also contributes to a better understanding of customers throughout the company.
For certain manufacturing equipment, we have also realized IoT. In the past, various numerical values that were the conditions for manufacturing had to be read from paper documents and manually input before the equipment could finally be put into operation. Now, however, the operator simply reads the designated barcode and the values are entered directly into the equipment. This has greatly contributed to the reduction of labor and human error.
DXThe list is endless in terms of the benefits of the new system: work that used to take three people to do can now be done by two, and work that used to take 30 minutes to complete can now be done in zero. In addition to the labor savings, some customers have commented that the digitalization of inspection items that used to require a sense of urgency are now unnecessary and less stressful. In addition, it is clear that yield rates have improved and complaints have decreased. DXin the electroplating department has brought benefits not only within the company, but also to customers.

The electrodeposition department is a small department,DX was never easy. Of course, no one in the company is familiar with DX. While we had the cooperation of our system vendor, we first had to think about what we needed to do, find software that could do it, and learn how to use it. We gradually increased the speed of progress by having younger people from within the company join the project on a voluntary basis.
To be honest, some of the workers were initially puzzled by DX. This is one of the challenges that many organizations face in promoting DX. We persistently told them that DXwas something that would "make things easier for us" and "benefit our customers. Above all, the company's policy of "promoting DX" and creating an atmosphere within the company that facilitated the DXproject must have provided a strong tailwind. I believe that the project members were able to work with confidence because they had the support of the company.

The electrodeposition department is only one department in the factory. Our immediate goal is to share and expand the DX case studies from this department to the entire factory or to other factories. Since increasing the number of human resources is indispensable for further DX promotion, we also need to promote the training of DX personnel within the company at the same time.
Through DX, a variety of information is being accumulated as digital data on a daily basis. We would like to work on analyzing and utilizing this enormous amount of information, or so-called "Big data. Expectations are high because we may be able to focus on areas that have not been noticed by the human eye until now, such as which equipment and under what conditions product quality becomes stable or abnormalities occur frequently. 
If you think about it on a company-wide level, DX has only just begun. Looking back, there is no end in sight to improving operational efficiency and product quality. This project is "super" long-term and continues today, at this very moment.