Many molding factories have been transferred overseas to secure profit earned by the lower labor cost. The molding industry is implementing various profit improvement programs such as product replacement with much higher value-added products, inventory optimization, workforce minimization, and operating cost reduction of molding machines.

The recent major activities among them are quality control (the reduction of defective fraction and inspection steps) and efficiency improvements in production (the optimization of inventories and the reduction of indirect labor cost). As a contribution, we have developed and marketed an IT based system (iii-System) for molding factories. This iii-System is able to control injection-molding machines up to 120 units from a control center. The features of the system are:

1) Able to monitor a molding site

Molding machines are connected to a PC via LAN, and their operating conditions are displayed on PC by color identification, and their individual service factors and latest information (number of production and cycle time) are also displayed. You can monitor the molding site real-time from an office or other remote place.

2) Able to see product quality

The system records the items to verify product quality for every shot (for every production cycle), and stores up to 4.5 million shots. The quality information is displayed on a 24-hour time scale. Also displayed are the occurrence of machine problems and the history of changes in operation settings.