Improve Production Technologies and Efficiency

The RIKEN TECHNOS GROUP will enhance the following initiatives to improve production efficiency.

1. We will review the production capacity of our sites, including those overseas, and study the optimal assignment with consideration of our business continuity plan.
2. We will implement the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle to improve productivity by setting production indicators and targets (key performance indicators) for each production line.
3. We will promote greater introduction of automated and labor-saving equipment as a measure to improve work efficiency and respond to manpower shortages.

We will also utilize process informatics and other digital transformation technologies to achieve optimization of production conditions and processes. Through these initiatives, we seek to improve productivity, and at the same time, achieve consistent quality, among other goals.

Indicators and Targets

Production Summit

We seek to improve our production technology and quality by creating a deeper understanding of the RIKEN Standard*, the foundation of our manufacturing, in our sites around the world. We are also promoting initiatives that seek to share manufacturing-related issues and solve them throughout the RIKEN TECHNOS GROUP.
To strengthen collaboration at the global level, we conduct our production summit involving us and our eight overseas production sites. We further enhance collaboration between sites and with Japan by bringing the representatives of these sites under one roof. Gathering in Japan, the mother factory, participants learn about productivity improvement activities, voluntary maintenance activities, and safety measures being conducted in Japan and bring them back to their respective sites to help improve each site.
While in Japan, the participants visit factories to understand improvement activities in the areas of compounds, films, and food packaging, which have different production methods. Through such visits, they can gain hints for solving similar issues and broaden their perspectives to carry out discussions while thinking.
At these summits, the sites present their improvement activities and understand the activities of other sites to mutually confirm each other’s level, engaging in friendly competition for self-improvement through having a competitive mindset of “We will not lose to another Group company.”
The participants bring the content back to their own countries and discuss them at their sites to bring about further improvement.

* RIKEN Standard is the RIKEN TECHNOS GROUP’s global process guidelines for manufacturing. With the expansion of business to overseas locations, the previous manufacturing process guidelines—which focused on Japan—were revised to be applicable at the global level.

Rebuilding of Factory Utilities Equipment

As part of our energy-saving activities for our factories, we are conducting improvement activities for air leakage locations. We will be rolling out these activities to our overseas sites in the future. We also have other plans, such as boiler fuel conversion and central monitoring of utilities equipment, and we will work on further contributing toward saving energy and reducing costs.