Customer Solution Case Study
/ Manufacturer Uses Diagramming Solution to Improve Responsiveness in Flood Prevention
Overview
Country or Region:Japan
Industry:Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Based in Japan, Ebara Densan specializes in the production of the electronic systems that control industrial pumps, such as those used by municipalities to prevent flooding.
Business Situation
Ebara Densan needed to unify its design and production workflows to shorten cycle times and boost quality control. It searched for a way to create data-linked diagrams to achieve these goals.
Solution
The company adopted Microsoft Visio 2010 and chose to extend functionality in the solution to create a custom production management system.
Benefits
- Increased efficiency
- Tighter quality control
- Faster customer responsiveness
Katsuhisa Nango, President and Representative Director, Ebara Densan
Ebara Densan, which specializes in manufacturingelectronic control and monitoring systems for industrial pumps, photovoltaic power generation, and energy saving facilities, needed to enhance its product developmentprocess. The company sought to integrate design, production, and testing procedures to reduce cycle times and improve quality control. With help from Meister Corporation, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network, the company used Microsoft Visio 2010, together with a custom module from Meister, to tailor a product development system to fit its unique needs. Now, by connecting diagrams and drawings in Visio 2010 to the data sources used in its production process, Ebara Densan is able to rapidly develop MicrosoftSilverlight-based monitoring applications tomanage projects more efficiently, pinpoint errors faster, and respond with greater agility to customer change requests.
Situation
Ebara Corporation manufactures water and gas pumps that are typically used in large-scale industrial and public infrastructure projects. For example, the company’s waterworks andwaste water treatment plant, and its sophisticated pumps and drainage systems, help municipalities all over the world mitigate the risk of flooding.
Challenge of a Non-Integrated Production Workflow
Ebara Densan, a subsidiary of Ebara Corporation, develops electronic monitoring and control systems for pump machinery. For years, Ebara Densan relied on a fragmented and semi-manual production workflow for developing its monitoring solutions. The process included drafting a design on paper, and then using specialized software to create a prototype of the system’s graphical user interface (GUI). The quality assurance team would then conduct extensive performance testing of the solution. “Each step in the production process had to be managed separately,” explains Koichi Inada, a Section Manager in the Information, Communication and Control System Department at Ebara Densan. “We had no way of linking an early design drawing to documents and data sources used in the development and testing stages, so it was hard to track changes throughout the process.”
Lack of a fully integrated and automated development not only lengthened production cycles, but it also made it more difficult to manage quality control. In some cases, defects that were introduced in the design and prototyping stages were not detected until much later in the process, when they were more time-consuming and expensive to fix.
To accelerate product development, improve quality control, and ultimately boost customer satisfaction, executives recognized the need to reengineer the company’s production flow. “We wanted to enable workers to collaborate and proactively solve problems from the start of each development project all the way to delivery of final product,” says Inada. The company also wanted to gain pricing flexibility by trimming its own costs. “Many of our customers are public sector organizations, which are currently facing tough budget constraints,” says Inada. “This is a key market for us, so it was important to keep our prices as competitive as possible by reducing operating expenses.”
Need to Adapt to Changing Industry Standards
Executives further recognized that Ebara Densan needed to adapt its manufacturing methodology to changing industry standards. “There’s a different model emerging when it comes to managing fluid machinery and systems,” says Katsuhisa Nango, President and Representative Director of Ebara Densan. “A good example of this evolution is how many river drainage pump facilities are now monitored.” He explains that, in the past, monitoring had to be performed onsite. However, with the recent shift in many countries to regional disaster management, there is a greater need for centralized monitoring of multiple facilities from a remote location. “We needed to ensure that we had flexible design and manufacturing tooling in place to quickly adjust to industry trends,” says Nango.
In late 2009, Ebara Densan announced a plan called “No More Defects,” which provided a framework for the company’s effort to overhaul its production processes. At the center of this initiative was the company’s search for a professional diagramming solution. To gain rapid time to value from its investment in new software, executives emphasized the need for a tool that was easy-to-use and extensible, so that design drawings could be merged with data stored in production and quality assurance systems. They also wanted the ability to quickly trace serial changes to draft diagrams. This functionality would help teams across the organization work together to maintain design integrity and technical accuracy throughout the product development life cycle.
Solution
In April 2010, after weighing several options, including using in-house resources to develop its own diagramming tool, Ebara Densan made the decision to implement Microsoft Visio 2010 Premium drawing and diagramming software.
Familiar, Standards-Based Technology
During the evaluation period, executives identified numerous advantages to adopting the Microsoft solution. “We ultimately chose Visio 2010 because it met our most important criteria,” says Yoshihiro Aikawa, Assistant Manager of the Monitoring and Control Systems Development Section at Ebara Densan, part of the company’s Information, Communication and Control Systems Department. “Almost all of our designers were already familiar with Visio 2010, so we were confident they would adopt it quickly. Plus, Visio 2010 has such a large user base and is built on standardized technology from Microsoft, so we knew that it would work the way we needed it to, and that it would be easy to support and upgrade over time.”
Centralized Tracking of Design Changes
Another important factor in the company’s decision to implement Visio 2010 was the availability of an add-in solution from Meister Corporation, a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with Gold competencies. The Japan-based ISV developed the solution by using the Microsoft Silverlight web development technology. The software, which interoperates seamlessly with Visio 2010, automatically records changes made to design documents and stores this information in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) format for use in creating Silverlight-based applications. “After considering ease-of-use, the simplified upgrade path, strong partner support, and the extensibility of the technology, we couldn’t think of any better option than going with Visio 2010,” says Aikawa.
Single, Interoperable System for Managing Production
Over the next 11 months, Ebara Densan worked closely with the team from Meister Corporation to create a fully customized product development system. The company can use the solution, which incorporates functionality in Microsoft Silverlight, Visio 2010, and the Meister XAML add-in component to Ebara Densan design,andbuild new real-time monitoring systems in less time.
The company completed development of the system in March 2011. Beginning in July 2011, Ebara Densan began using its new
engineering tool to guide the GUI design for an industrial pump system for one of its existing customers.
Designers from Ebara Densan and several of its vendors now use the tool to collaborate. As the company prepares to extend the tool to additional employees and partners, executives have noted key advancements in efficiency. “Now, we have access to tool sets for creating interface design elements, business logic, and logic validation—all in a single system,” says Aikawa. “We’ve been able to dramatically reduce the number of specialized applications we use, which enables us to improve the speed and quality of our manufacturing processes.” The company also appreciates the interoperability between Visio 2010 and Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software. “We can create design specification documents simply by exporting data stored in Visio 2010 to worksheets in Excel 2010,” says Aikawa. “This is a fantastic feature of the solution.”
Benefits
By using Microsoft Visio 2010 to better connect its production process, as shown in Figure 1, Ebara Densan has been able to consolidate tools, increase efficiency, and improve quality control. In turn, the company is better equipped to serve the needs of its customers. “Floodwater control facilities are essential components of the social infrastructure,” says Nango. “By using Visio 2010 to improve our monitoring systems, we can help public entities prepare for and minimize damages caused by flooding, which can directly impact hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Reduced Costs by 80 Percent with Consolidation of Design and Production Tools
Ebara Densan has used Visio 2010 to replace multiple specialized tools for design, production, and system validation operations with a single, easy-to-use system. The company estimates that it is able to reduce costs by as much as 80 percent based on time savings and minimizing the need to outsource production work. By using Visio 2010, we can link design files to our production and testing interface,” says Aikawa. “This means we use fewer tools, minimize duplication of work, and spend less time on administrative tasks.” As a result of allocating fewer hours to managing workflow, the company can focus more time on efforts to develop new technologies and expand its service offerings to customers.
Improved Quality Control Through Enhanced Error Detection
Historically, the company’s use of disparate tools and discrete work for each phase of the production process made it difficult to isolate defects and remediate these issues quickly. Now, the company can rigorously track changes to product specifications at every stage of the manufacturing process to maintain the highest levels of accuracy and design integrity. “We’ve used Visio 2010 to greatly narrow the gap between product design,implementation, and test processes, which has enabled us to make continuous improvements in the area of quality management,” says Nango.
Faster Responsiveness to Customer Change Requests
Because Ebara Densan can connect design files in Visio 2010 to data sources used in the development process, the company is able to respond in a more agile way to customer change requests. Before, the company would need to create a new design drawing, rewrite the binary code, and then test the system to make sure it aligned with the updated requirements. “With Visio 2010, we can change product specifications based on prior design data without the need for additional programming, which means we can now respond faster to urgent requests from customers—while keeping our project costs low.And, by using the Meister add-in application for Visio 2010, Ebara Densan can generatestandards-based XAML data for use in rapidly developing Silverlight-based monitoring applications to meet emerging customer needs.
Microsoft Visio 2010
Microsoft Visio 2010 takes diagramming to a new level with dynamic, data-driven visualization tools and templates, enhanced process management capabilities, and advanced web sharing. Combine real-time data from multiple sources, including Microsoft SharePoint lists, Microsoft Excel 2010, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, into one powerful diagram using vibrant graphics like icons and data bars. Use subprocesses to manage processes and to validate rules and logic to ensure accuracy and consistency across the organization. Design workflows in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and, without using code, export them to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 for real-time execution and monitoring. Share refreshable, data-linked diagrams over the web with anyone, even those who don't have Visio 2010.
For more information about Microsoft Visio 2010, go to:
visio.microsoft.com