Case Study - Dainichi Kakou
Brief information about the company:
Name: Dainichi Kakou
Number of Employees: 86 (As of January, 2021)
Location: Tokyo
Founded in 1959 December
Industry: Plastic Products Manufacturing
We managed to greatly reduce hours spent on repetitive tasks and paper-based work by deploying EDIFAS
Dainichi Kakou Co., Ltd. is a plastic product manufacturing company. With a history of more than 60 years, they’ve addressed a wide range of customer needs, such as injection molding of resin and secondary processing such as printing and ultrasonic bonding, assembly, and packaging. Under the slogan of “Vision 70” toward the 70th anniversary, Dainichi Kakou is working on implementing a smart factory and aims to provide the best solution to their customers’ tasks. We interviewed Mr. Tetsuya Higuchi of the Purchasing Group about the background of the deployment of “EXtelligence EDIFAS (EDIFAS)” and the tasks solved by leveraging EDIFAS.
-Could you tell us why you decided to deploy EDIFAS?
We wanted to deploy EDIFAS because of the pressing need to reduce the time and labor required for processing sales and purchase orders via FAX and the amount of paper used. Before EDIFAS, we used FAX to send purchase orders and ATP notifications one by one and managed all of the exchanges and inputs using multiple sheets of paper by hand. The complexity of analog communication leads to the omission of confirmation of materials and transmission mistakes. The fact that more than 160 sheets of paper must be used a month has also been a problem within the company. We have a corporate culture that positively challenges new things. As the first step toward a smart factory, we decided to introduce services to improve operational efficiency and tackle environmental problems. When introducing it, we usually compare services with other companies, but I was relieved that it was “Aix’s product,” so we decided to introduce it by choosing EDIFAS without comparison.
-What did you manage to achieve by deploying EDIFAS?
Thanks to EDIFAS, we’ve reduced the amount of paper used and the time and labor required for manual data entry. Although we continue using FAX for some tasks, the time needed for purchase/sales order processing is less than half of what it used to be before EDIFAS deployment. We also noticed additional merit that we didn’t expect. Until now, when there was a change in delivery date from a customer, the sales department needed to confirm the change and respond to the customer through the purchasing department. However, now that information is centralized in EDIFAS, the sales department can directly check the information in the manufacturing management system “Factory-ONE,” which is seamlessly integrated with EDIFAS. There is no need to check the information through additional communication with the purchasing department, which makes the entire process simpler and shorter. This seamless structure of EDIFAS had a substantial positive impact on in-house production control and accelerating communication, improving productivity and efficiency, and enabling comfortable and smooth communication with our customers and partners.
-Did you feel any troubles or difficulties during the period from implementation to operation?
It took about three months from deployment to operation, much shorter than we expected. Well, that’s because EDIFAS is simple to operate and user-friendly. We even received comments from our customers and partners that “EDIFAS is easy to use.” And the support system is also excellent. The response to my inquiry email just 15 minutes after I sent it was rapid and helpful.
-Could you tell us about your future plans?
We feel that EDIFAS not only improves our work efficiency but also helps to increase customer satisfaction and boosts sales due to the easy-to-do transactions. Transactions and communication using a copy machine or paper are stressful because of the human burden and slow response and oversight. Since EDIFAS solves this problem, we think that we can now realize stress-free, seamless, and smooth communication.