TSI Sewing, founded in 1977 and part of Japan’s TSI Holdings group, estimates it has managed to double the number of contracts it can undertake with the same number of staff after opting for Shima Seiki automated cutting technology.

This has been installed at the company’s new factory in Yamagata, which opened two years ago.

“When planning the new Yamagata factory, we had in mind a production space where young people would be able to more easily pass on their skills to future generations,” said president and CEO Wataru Nishiushi. “We adopted Shima Seiki’s cutting system because of its high efficiency and labour savings and it is ensuring a completely smooth workflow through automation of the cutting processes. In the past, we had cutting masters who were highly-experienced experts, but now even young staff can perform precision cutting.

“Due to just-in-time production, the average size of a specific order three years ago has now halved, which means to maintain our order schedule with our old system we would have had to double the number of staff to keep up, but this has not been the case with this new automated system. We have, in effect, doubled the number of orders we are processing with no problem.”

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