Building on Decades of Heavy Machinery Innovation

About ninety years ago, Kobelco Construction Machinery, a subsidiary of major Japanese steel manufacturer Kobe Steel, created Japan’s first electric mining shovel – a feat of engineering innovation that set the tone for decades of pioneering technological developments. The KOBELCO SK3500D, for example, was listed by Guinness World Records for operating at the world’s highest work height of over 65 meters and is currently the world’s largest building demolition machine.

To build on its strong foundation of heavy machinery innovation and continue to transform, Kobelco Construction Machinery is strengthening its partnership with Dassault Systèmes, a collaboration which began back in 2000 when it implemented CATIA V5 for design and ENOVIA SmarTeam for product data management.

“Our market is evolving rapidly,” said Yoshiaki Shishido, Kobelco Construction Machinery’s group manager of total support group and general manager of global IT system department. “We must differentiate ourselves by providing high quality, high performing and compliant solutions as well as maintenance service capabilities. To succeed, we need to advance our digital transformation and be better equipped to utilize vast amounts of data. We believe that we can do this with Dassault Systèmes technology.”

Improving Production Processes

The smart factory capabilities of DELMIA offer further value. “With DELMIA, we analyze the variation between the simulated workload and actual work time at each workstation, improving accuracy,” Shishido said. “If each plant will be able to reduce cycle time from 15 minutes to 12 minutes, it will increase production from 10,000 units per plant per year to 12,000 units per plant per year.”

Once the current implementation is complete, Kobelco Construction Machinery will leverage additional platform capabilities. “We plan to use DELMIA Apriso’s manufacturing execution system to manage the quality inspection process more appropriately in our overseas plants and to estimate shipping weights,” Shishido said.

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