Effective April 1, 2015 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) will revamp its production structure for casting products. From that date all current Group casting operations will be consolidated at the company's Futami Plant, part of its Kobe Shipyard & Machinery Works, and the existing casting plants at the Hiroshima Machinery Works and Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works (Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd.'s Nagasaki Works) will be closed down. In consolidating casting-related functions at one plant MHI looks to reduce in-house manufacturing costs and forge a robust production system capable of withstanding operational fluctuations. Also, by unifying production technologies the company aims to strengthen its developmental capabilities in steel casting products and to enhance its overall competitive strength by making increased use of domestic and overseas business partners.
On April 1, 2014 MHI inaugurated a Foundry & Forging Center in its new Machinery, Equipment and Infrastructure business domain; but today, as MHI's group companies face increasingly intense global competition, casting product prices are trending downward. In response the company elected to pursue greater use of domestic and overseas business partners in order to enhance its capacity to withstand fluctuations in currency exchange rates, and as a result the volume of casting products produced in-house has been in a contracting trend.
Casting technologies are core technologies indispensable to the MHI group's manufacturing and product development, and the company intends to focus on maintaining and passing these technologies on. But as the volume of in-house production wanes, maintaining the current structure of operating three plants has become unfeasible. The company has thus decided to restructure its casting operations in order to create a system that will strengthen its skill transfer and technology development capabilities beyond the near term, enhance QCD (quality, cost and delivery control), and foster the cultivation of engineers and human resources to instruct overseas business partners.
Following the restructuring initiative the Foundry & Forging Center will be in charge of in-house production of casting products relating to thermal and nuclear power plants, compressors, steelmaking machinery, etc. It will also oversee all casting operations carried out within the Mitsubishi group, including the education of domestic and overseas partners and technological support for all casting products.
Going forward MHI will pursue even greater competitive strength for its group operations through the creation of a robust production system for its casting plant enabled by reduction in fixed costs, and will promote optimally efficient use of its human and physical plant resources through consolidation of production bases.
