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STRONG CONFIDENCE IN OUR CORPORATE CULTURE AS A MANUFACTURING SITE
ST Mobile Display Corp.
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Ohmi is a city that lies between eastern and western Japan,
between Kyoto to the west and Kamakura and Edo to the
east, and as such has been involved in all the major upheavals
in Japanese history.
A rich world of mobile communications has been brought forth
from this region.
ST Mobile Display Corp. (STMD) was created as a joint venture
between Sony Corporation and Toyota Industries Corporation
on March 31, 2005 to nurture the liquid crystal display (LCD)
technologies developed by its predecessor company.
Along with ST Liquid Crystal Display Corp., which is also a joint
venture between Sony and Toyota Industries, STMD will
respond flexibly to the needs of this growing market as an
important manufacturing site for Sony’s low-temperature polycrystalline
silicon TFT LCD products for mobile equipment.
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Episode
At the same time as starting up the production line, President
Tsuyuki and the rest of the management team put
special efforts not only into easing the concerns of the staff
inherited from the company in its earlier form but also into
increasing the motivation of the personnel. They quickly
created a video introducing the new company, provided new
work uniforms, and presented employees with children starting
school the school backpacks required in Japanese
elementary schools. Even though they knew that they were
late relative to the recruitment cycle, they started recruitment
of new graduates in April, and this was an effective
advertising appeal for laying down roots in the community
to develop the company even further.
According to President Tsuyuki “All of our employees who
went to their alma maters to introduce the company were
extremely enthusiastic. They called on the younger generation
from their schools. We were extremely pleased to see
this occur.”
This spring, we had nine new graduates join previous graduates
from their school in working for us as the first “class”
since the new company was formed. |
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Tadaharu Tsuyuki
President
ST Mobile Display Corp.
(Present: Corporate Adviser) |
Hisao Hayashi
Executive Deputy President
ST Mobile Display Corp.
(Present: President) |
Masuyuki Okuno
General Manager
Manufacturing Operations Dept.
ST Mobile Display Corp. |
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Continuity and Challenge in the Fully Automatic Production Line
“Look, it’s eating its dinner just now.”
President Tadaharu Tsuyuki pointed to an
Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) that had
moved to a corner of the clean room.
“It recharges itself during the intervals between
transport operations. When it has the
time, it feeds itself.”
It was Masuyuki Okuno, General Manager of
the Manufacturing Operations Dept., who told
us that “We put a lot of thought into where to
locate the recharging points for efficiency. We
had to put a lot of thought into whether the
AGVs, of which there are several tens of units,
should recharge themselves when their charge
is almost completely exhausted or whether
they should recharge themselves when only
partially discharged. Don’t you find this sort
of problem fascinating?”
If we look back to the predecessors of STMD,
one of its roots first appeared in 1996. In that
year in the Yasu section of Shiga Prefecture,
where the current STMD has its corporate
headquarters, the industry’s first fully automate
production line for the TFT process
(amorphous silicon) was completed. According
to Okuno, who knew the situation at that
time, the AGVs were the key to full automation.
“At that time, AGV motion was limited to
just advancing and turning. We added sideways
motion and diagonal motion modes, and
that allowed an AGV whose motion was
blocked to move around the obstacle. This
greatly improved the line of flow and made
full automation possible.”
We have inherited and developed further an
accumulation of production techniques of this
sort, and applied this approach to the low-temperature
polycrystalline silicon TFT LCD
production line, which is an ever more complex
process.
The “obviously visible” automation, such as
AGVs, robot arms, and ceiling transport systems,
is just a small part of this automation.
Executive Deputy President Hisao Hayashi
boasts that “We are overwhelmingly advanced
in the software area as well.”
“It is not merely the case that each process
unit simply performs its processing according
to the process recipe it is given. The system
is designed so that each unit automatically
acquires the data for the results of its
processing, determines itself whether or not
problems such as variations in quality have
occurred, and provides feedback.”
This system evaluates its own work while
manufacturing the products. This is the extent
to which automation has advanced.
Close coordination with Sony’s process technology
was indispensable to construct, and
then further improve, such a production line.
Okuno added that “Compared to amorphous
technology, the low-temperature polycrystalline
silicon TFT LCD technology has a great
variety of items that must be managed
closely, and thus is that much more difficult.
Still, we all hope to create an even better automated
line than we have now.”
Implementing automation for a new field is
meaningful exactly because it is a new field.
President Tsuyuki emphasized that dust management
is one of those issues.
“Since high resolution is a main sales point
of the low-temperature polycrystalline silicon
TFT technology, thoroughgoing dust
management is required for manufacturing.
The adverse effects of dust increase as the
size of the devices shrink, and as the number
of people watching digital terrestrial TV
broadcasts on cellular phones increases, the
requirements for picture quality will become
more stringent. For that reason we have made
a point of achieving nearly full automation
even in the cell processes (panel assembly,
liquid crystal material insertion, and other
steps), which are the processes that require
special care that dust contamination does not
occur. We are convinced that the properties
of fully automated lines that do not require
direct human involvement will show their
strengths even more clearly in association
with increases in image quality.” |
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AGV that can move about freely in the forward, sideways,
and diagonal directions. The system decides
automatically based on the state of the work progress
whether to proceed to the next process or whether to
move temporarily to a stocker. “When Sony President
Ryoji Chubachi came to visit, he told us that it seemed
to him to be a restrained and refined line. As manufacturing
professionals, we thought those to be words of
high praise.” (Masuyuki Okuno, General Manager) |
 An Unmanned System Made Possible by Our People |
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See all articles with
figures and tables. 
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Vol.45 |
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