Divisional Technologies Utilized Together to Create a Solution in Line with the Era - This is the Manufacturing in Kawasaki

Publish Date2014.07.31

Technologies from a number of businesses are housed under the same roof and used together—this approach constitutes Kawasaki’s brand of manufacturing. How does Seishin Works move the automation of production lines forward to manufacture its jet engines? Masahiro Chiba, a production engineer in the Gas Turbine Engineering Department, provides answers to this topic.

Assembling Kawasaki’s Various Technologies to Promote Automation

Technologies from a number of businesses are housed under the same roof and utilized together—this approach constitutes Kawasaki’s brand of manufacturing. To manufacture its jet engines, Seishin Works collaborates with the development branch of the robot production system to promote the automation of its production lines.

Even finishing techniques that tend to be difficult for robots, that are dependent on the skills of individual craftspeople, can be realized with Kawasaki technologies. This is the new form of Kawasaki’s manufacturing engineering that mobilizes knowhow from the entire company.

Through the automation, we will work to eliminate qualitative uncertainty caused by manual processes to the full extent possible, while addressing the decline in craftspeople with refined workmanship, a problem Japan’s manufacturing industry will face as the population has aged.

Like Subtle Changes to Pen Pressure, Delicate Touch Realized with Robotics

Specifically, in addition to sensing technologies for detecting misalignment in the positioning of parts, constant torque control is utilized to perform pressure adjustments at parts touch points, which realized a delicate touch similar to how a person can change the pressure placed on a pen when writing.

 This development however has in no way eliminated jobs for our engineers. Transferring work to robots allows us to put more focus on innovation—a style of manufacturing that fits the current era and will create the next one.

Developing this new style of refined workmanship ahead of time, we believe, is the mission of Kawasaki.

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Machining Technology Section
Production Engineering Department
Production Center
Gas Turbine Division
Gas Turbine & Machinery Company
Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.
Masahiro Chiba

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