Yoneyama Mold Co. Ltd.
Yoneyama Mold Co. Ltd. produces plastic injection moulding tools under the Y.MOLD brand name and mainly for the Japanese market. Just over half the customers are in the automotive industry. However manufacturers of white goods and telecommunications equipment are also well represented.
Since 1986, the company has been based in Ina, Nagano, where the 1,200 m2 factory now has 20 employees. Nearby, in a smaller facility, five workers are employed entirely in the production of short series of precision components.
In response to competition from low-cost countries, Yoneyama decided to consolidate its position in the “Premier League” of Japanese moulding tool manufacture. This would be done by focusing operations on high-quality tools.
Automation brings strength
Factory Manager Nobuyuki Shimaoka relates: “One way of strengthening our position has been to outsource simpler tool parts to subcontractors. This allows us to concentrate on the more complex components. Another way has been to make maximum possible use of automatic production cells. Partly because it’s difficult to find skilled workers. Partly to minimise, as much as possible, faults due to the human factor and, last but not least, to increase the number of spindle hours in our machines.”
The supreme milling cell with WorkPartner and WorkShopManager.
The first automatic production cell, a Mitsubishi die-sinking EDM machine and a 16-position WorkPal, was installed barely ten years ago. Upgrading has continued since then. For example, a double cell – a coordinate machine, a Mitsubishi MA2000 die-sinking EDM machine and a WorkMaster; the Macro system for the spindle nose and MacroMagnum on the machine table.
It was then the turn of the milling machines – a Makino V55 with a 12-position magazine for machining workpieces on MacroMagnum pallets. This was quickly followed by a Makino V33 with 60 Macro pallets for electrode production.
The latest addition came last year in the form of a Roku-Roku Mega III with a WorkPartner and System 3R’s WorkShopManager software. This setup is used for the production of complex components. The magazine holds 20 MacroMagnum pallets, each with at least one vice. Some have four.
Factory Manager Nobuyuki Shimaoka: “Automatic production cells strengthen our position as a supplier of high-quality tools.”
“A supreme combination,” states the production manager. “We work only one shift, but still get almost 20 hours a day out of this cell. The cell will have completely paid for itself in two years. Indeed, we have well-advanced plans to turn it into a double cell with an identical machine on the other side of the robot.
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