TCJEORCOMPANY NAME

Digital Solutions Inc.

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Smart Manufacturing by Linking Medium andSmall Sized Companies

Creating a Usable IoT That Can Easily Be Introduced toMedium and Small Sized Companies Which Can Then
Become a Foundation for Further Development in Hiroshima
Prefecture
Smart factories, a facility in which all the data is digitized and production is organized by smart manufacturing, has
become a hot topic in the world today. However, a lot of medium and small sized companies have not yet introduced anysmart systems because of reasons like costs. The following project by Digital Solutions Inc. connects in-house systems
and unifies data management to reduce human errors caused by manual operation and the inefficient use of facilities.
They are developing a platform that visualizes a factory’s operational status. First, data is collected from all the IoT
devices and analyzed. Then a prognosis is made about potential failures, and solutions are developed to optimize
production. Their ultimate goal of this project is to reform the entire manufacturing industry of Hiroshima prefecture.

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Frequently Changed Production Plans, Unpredictable Production
Lines—How Can Medium and Small Sized Companies Solve These
Problems with IoT?
Kota Hashizume, assistant manager of the software department of Digital Solutions Inc., worked for a small manufacturing
company six years ago. "I was surprised to see the present situation of small manufacturing factories. AI, IoT andrecent technologies like these are a kind of trend these days but the factory floor had not changed at all since I
started working," he said. He once visited a factory which manufactured prototypes for big companies. They ran a jobbing
foundry that produced either many models in small quantities or one prototype model. They could not set prices because they
were a subcontract factory.
Furthermore, short delivery and design changes tend to be requested during the prototyping process.Once it is decided
that a design is to be changed, manufacturing is discontinued and processing machineries being used are left on standby until
the renewed design has come. However, the stop in the production line influences the whole production process of thefactory, and it can result in a decrease in sales. Mr. Hashizume was especially shocked by this talk because of his experience
with IoT’s ability to overcome these kinds of issues. "I soon felt that their problem was worse than I expected. I know IoT
won’t solve everything at once, but still, I want to alleviate the sufferings of those small factories with ourtechnology."

IoT Visualizes All the Data in Factories, AI Predicts Machinery
TroublesThe project’s goal is to encourage medium and small sized companies that have been operating manually with analog
devices to digitize and optimize effectively. One of the first steps is to visualize the operation situation. In medium and small
sized manufacturing industries, frequent design change is a common occurrence and every time it happens, the person incharge must replan the manufacturing schedule. However, that means that if he/she is out of the office, sometimes nobody
can renew the schedule, and the whole process must be suspended. Digital Solution’s project sets IoT sensors and lamps
like patrol car lamps. These are synchronized to monitor each machine. These sensors can measure the progress of
individual machines and determine which machines are used the most. This data is then stored in the cloud. This data can beshown on displays at factories or smartphones as visualized operation statuses. This system makes planning themanufacture of a product easier and more efficient. By analyzing accumulated data sets, they can then proceed to the next
step: the development of software that can optimize the manufacturing process by setting the order of machine use
automatically.
Digital Solutions is planning to introduce IoT for machinery troubles that cause changes to the manufacturing schedule.
For example, a gear pump in a factory is equipped with sensors for measuring pressure, temperature, flow and vibration.
Digital Solutions is also developing a system for predicting machinery troubles by collecting data about the durability of themachines which is then analyzed by an AI. In response to demand from companies, they started visualization demonstrationsof the tools and devices used in the factories. They were told about actual situations where numerous tools and devices usedin factories were lost because workers did not put them back in the right places due to their oppressive schedules resulting
from the time intensive nature of manual manufacturing. The project is now trying to solve this simple but unavoidable problem
by digitizing tool usage information and by attaching IC tags. They are also exploring ways to share less frequently used tools
and devices among different factories.

The Rise of Large Smart Companies, Smaller Unchanging Ones

A Native Hiroshima System That Is Always Ready to Assist

The impact of Industry 4.0, which is a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and was defined by the German government in2011, has affected the world’s industries. A lot of companies in Japan have also introduced IoT devices. These devices
digitize the process of manufacturing by linking all of a factory’s machines over a network, thus enabling radical business
improvements. However, while big companies and enterprises are rapidly shifting to these new “smart factories,” medium andsmall sized companies, who do not necessarily have the financial backing that large companies do, have not introduced even
IT tools and devices yet. They have equipped their factories with machines and established their own manufacturingknow-how, but they have not had enough time and money to implement new technologies. While big companies consistently
drive digitalization forward in manufacturing, medium and small sized companies, which support those big companies’
business from the bottom, can’t keep up with the times. The Society for Neuro Business Research from the Japan Medium
and Small Enterprise Consultant Association (J-SMECA) has been studying this problem.
The necessity of developing low-cost IoT systems that are easier for medium and small sized companies to introduce has
been their topic of discussion in recent yearsm. When they learned about the Hiroshima Sandbox Project, they saw it as agreat opportunity. Since joining the Hiroshima Sandbox Project, they have grown their own personal consortium to include,TSUDA Co., Ltd., Komatsu Kinzoku CO., LTD., Koryo Hatsujo CO., LTD., Kondo Manufacturing, ApstoWeb Ltd., J-SMECA,and Digital Solutions Inc. Professor Ryuji Tanizaki, an expert in factory optimization from Kindai University, also joined theteam.

Currently, these systems are only utilized at factories belonging
to consortium members; however, they are planning to spreadtheir system to the whole manufacturing industry of Hiroshima asan IoT system that can be easily introduced. "I know there may
be systems similar to ours," Mr. Hashizume says. "But I
believe that it is worth it because our system was born inHiroshima. This means we, the developers, can quickly
hurry to assist a local company anytime we are needed."

HIROSHIMA SANDBOXINDUSTRIALINNOVATIONPROJECT TITLE①②●Digital Solutions Inc.
①Kota Hashizume ②Kazuhiro Kohge

HIROSHIMA SANDBOX04