The Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun 67th The Best 10 New Products SIRMS® Receives the Nippon Brand Prize
January 08, 2025
The crane digital transformation tool SIRMS® by Sumitomo Heavy Industries Material Handling Systems Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director, President, and CEO: Shinya Saito; a fully owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd.; hereinafter “SHI Material Handling Systems”) received the Nippon Brand Prize at the 67th The Best 10 New Products sponsored by The Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, Ltd. This award represents Japanese manufacturing and is given to products that have a global impact. SIRMS® is Japan’s first digital transformation tool made for shipbuilding cranes, and SHI Material Handling Systems believes that it was recognized for being a product that can support and develop Japanese manufacturing. Going forward, SHI Material Handling Systems will strive to further promote SIRMS® in the shipbuilding industry and expand it to other industries.
■ About SIRMS®
SIRMS® is a digital transformation tool released in May 2024 to help improve field productivity by visualizing and analyzing the operation status of cranes. Utilizing SIRMS® makes it possible to check the status of all crane operations in real time, which was difficult to accurately gauge in the past. In addition, SIRMS® helps achieve stable operation and better planning accuracy by accumulating and analyzing operation data.
SIRMS® drives productivity improvement through the three key points listed in the table below.
| Key points | Details |
|---|---|
| Achieving stable operation | Lowers the risk of operation shutdown through failure prevention using the automated reporting function and accumulated data. |
| Improving planning accuracy | Helps identify inefficiencies and find improvement measures by gauging the gap between operation plans and actual operational performance more accurately. |
| Sharing information | Contributes to increased work efficiency by enabling anyone to readily check the crane operation information and the parts and spares scattered across the plants in real time. |
■ Development Background
As a major crane manufacturer that is essential for handling blocks and outfitting components, SHI Material Handling Systems has come a long way alongside its customers from the Japanese shipbuilding industry. SHI Material Handling Systems has delivered hundreds of cranes for the shipbuilding industry to date, accounting for over 90% of the market share. Over the years, the company has received many inquiries regarding productivity improvement, such as “We are unable to accurately gauge the status of the cranes operating in the plant” and “Even when there are large deviations between operation plans and actual operational performance, we are unable to develop improvement measures because we cannot identify the cause.” SIRMS® was developed based on feedback from customers facing these issues saying, “It would be great if we could know the operation status of cranes.”
In an effort to meet further customer expectations, SHI Material Handling Systems plans to expand SIRMS® to other industries and models and will develop products using the cultivated technological expertise and collected data.