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Focusing on new product development as a general machinery manufacturer in anticipation of major changes in industrial structure

Nachi-Fujikoshi Co., Ltd. was founded in Toyama in 1928 with the aim of domestically producing machine tools that used to depend on imports.

With a long-term vision of “taking on the challenge of becoming a growing company and becoming a manufacturing company that fulfills dreams,” we will leverage our uniqueness in diverse businesses, technologies, and production know-how to serve customers in the automotive, industrial machinery, energy, and infrastructure fields. We offer a wide range of solutions. As a global company, it supports manufacturing around the world, providing a large number of solutions not only in Japan but also in China, the Americas, Europe, and ASEAN, and overseas sales account for about half of its sales.

The main businesses are machining business such as cutting tools and machine tools, robot business that handles industrial robots, functional parts business such as bearings and hydraulic equipment, and material business that handles special steel and coating. Among them, in the machine tool division, we boast the world's top market share in the field of special processing machines such as broaching machines for broaching.

Currently, in anticipation of major changes in the industrial structure, including deoxygenation and the shift to EVs, in the medium to long term, we are actively developing new products and making technical proposals that are useful for users' manufacturing, making use of our characteristics as a comprehensive machinery manufacturer. Is going.

Task

We want to differentiate ourselves with a tool damage detection system that identifies tool damage and the appropriate timing for tool replacement.

Against the backdrop of market trends such as the global trend of DX promotion and the issue of know-how transfer in the manufacturing industry, the machine tool business handled by the company aims to differentiate itself from its competitors by implementing the functions necessary for machine tools. There was a demand for functional development to provide new added value to customers.

-Mr. Tomoyasu Furuta, Skiving Development Project, Machine Tool Division
Many machine tool manufacturers, not just us, are focusing on implementing new functions that contribute to DX. We were also working to create an environment where we could provide unprecedented added value by making full use of new technologies such as IoT and AI.

In particular, in the automobile industry, which the company has targeted, there are concerns that the number of parts will decrease as the trend toward electric vehicles and EVs accelerates.
Therefore, it was necessary to acquire new customers, and in order to provide machine tools to the market, it was necessary to develop functions with high added value.
In the midst of this, when developing new functions, we listened to the voices of customers who wanted to quickly detect damage to expensive tools necessary for product processing, and who wanted to use up the tools until the right time.

- Mr. Furuta
Some of the tools are expensive, costing several million yen, and it is common to re-polish and reuse them after they have worn to a certain extent. The timing is usually based on the processing time and the number of processed parts.

However, since the state of wear varies depending on the machining conditions, the optimal timing for tool replacement must depend on the intuition and know-how of experts.

- Mr. Furuta
If you make a mistake with the setting, the tool may be severely damaged and you may not be able to re-grind it. If it becomes impossible to process, it will lead to a large opportunity loss, so it is very important to determine the appropriate timing.

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