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An opening ceremony was held for a new building at Shimane Shimadzu Corporation, a manufacturing subsidiary of Shimadzu Corporation located in Shimane Prefecture (2698 Naoe, Hikawa-cho, Izumo-shi, Shimane). The new building features various manufacturing digital transformation (DX) measures, including automated coating processes for Medical Systems components. Coating process automation will increase coating production capacity by 50 % at Shimane Shimadzu.

Shimane Shimadzu is a manufacturing subsidiary that manufactures X-ray systems developed by the Medical Systems Division of Shimadzu Corporation. Since its establishment in 1997, the company has been engaged in integrated production including machining, sheet-metal fabrication, welding, coating, and assembly production processes. Since then, the company has continuously implemented improvement measures, such as to increase productivity, ensure consistent quality, and improve workplace environments. With the new building, Shimane Shimadzu will now be able to coat a large number of parts for general radiography systems, fluoroscopy systems, mobile X-ray systems, and other X-ray products on a single production line. In addition to fully automating the processes of transferring parts between coating process steps and loading them into automatic coating equipment, wireless radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags will be used to assign different manufacturing instructions for each part and AI will be used to automatically detect errors. Furthermore, a reuse system of over-sprayed powder coating material was introduced to eliminate the disposal of waste powder. For welding processes, robots were introduced to ensure consistent quality, increase productivity, and reduce the burden on workers.

In the future, AI-based quality inspection capabilities will be introduced for coating processes and robotics will be used for the remaining manual coating steps in an effort to fully automate the manufacturing of parts. In addition to the productivity improvements achieved through plant DX measures, Shimadzu Corporation and Shimane Shimadzu also remain committed to providing healthy workplace environments that improve employee health and reduce environmental impacts and to supplying high-quality products to healthcare institutions throughout the world.

 Photo: Completed New Building

Overview of the New Building