BACKGROUND
Morita has been developing firefighting technology for over a century. They built the first fire truck in Japan in 1917.
Today, Morita is one of the key fire truck manufacturers globally, and their Sanda Factory, a 57,000 square-meter production site, produces around 700 fire trucks every year.
CHALLENGE
Unlike the traditional car manufacturing process, fire trucks do not move continuously in a production line. Most of the building work happens at a single terminal within the site. There are many trucks in the same terminal at the same time.
Due to the size of the factory, it is significantly time-consuming to find how many trucks are in each area and identify & track each truck through the production phase. The production site itself is also a challenging environment as it is full of metal objects.
SOLUTION
To tackle this challenge, Morita started proactively looking for asset-tracking solutions. After testing a couple of tracking solutions, they found Kokusai Kogyo’s location-based Bluetooth® solution, powered by Quuppa.
The solution includes the on-site installation of Quuppa Locators, and each truck has a tag. The system generates real-time data that can be monitored continuously. The employees can now see how many trucks there are in a specific area and where they are.
The solution provided by Kokusai Kogyo, based on Quuppa technology, proved to be the best match for Morita’s requirements;
- Real-time and high-accuracy location information.
- High enough accuracy even in challenging environments, i.e. a large area with high ceilings and full of metal structures.
- Reasonable infrastructure and low maintenance cost.
- Possible to extend to other needs in the future.
RESULTS
The solution has exceeded Morita’s expectations and helped their fire truck production run much more efficiently. The employees can now locate fire trucks easily as well as monitor and follow them from station to station. This allows them to predict potential delays in production.
NEXT STEPS
Morita plans to develop and find more use cases for the Kokusai Kogyo’s solution and Quuppa technology and to extend the solution to be used more widely in their operation.