DEC 11 — Honda Motor Co., Ltd is on its way towards not only a highly-efficient automotive plant, but environmentally responsible as well. Malaysian Motoring media were treated to a tour of the Yorii plant, Honda's latest addition to the Saitama Factory when we visited the Tokyo Motor Show recently.

Designed under the concept of “producing the world's cleanest products at the world's cleanest plant,” the people-friendly and environmentally-responsible Yorii Plant strives to become the world's top class energy saving plant through the adoption of Honda's most advanced production technologies and establishment of a highly efficient production system. Covering an area of approximately 950,000 square metres, it has a capacity of 250,000 units a year.

High use of robots at the plant.

The Yorii Plant, which features innovative technologies and will be the model for new Honda plants around the world plants around the world, further increases the efficiency of its production system through centralized production of the Global Compact Series including the all-new Fit (which we know here as the Jazz) as well as small-sized SUV and sedan which will be introduced to the market in the future. Immediate beneficiaries will be the plants in Mexico, China and Brazil which will be operational soon.

The visit was a real eye-opener - we saw some innovations that were really revolutionary, whilst others were just common-sense items that simply have not been thought of before, but all of which contribute to higher efficiencies and actually reduce cost. It is a pity that photography was restricted to only one area.

In the area of stamping, (where sheet metal is 'stamped' to make the metal parts of a car) a higher volume is achieved through a high speed servo stamping press and the adoption of high speed die change. According to Honda, the stamping efficiency is improved by approximately 40 per cent.

Body welding.

At the welding section, there is high use of robots, but most importantly, there is an overall reduction of production equipment. A case is point is in the main body assembly - here, the conventional large-sized jig makes way for a smaller robot jig. At this point, the floor pan, side panels and the roof all come together, held by robots, and placed on what looks more like a platform than a jig, and after a few seconds for lasers to do the checking, are welded together by other smaller welding robots, and voila, the main body is done. And all this accomplished in a couple of minutes.

In other plants, the 'hemming' of doors, bonnets and other panels that require it, is done by a large machine which is purpose-built for each specific panel. The process of 'hemming' typically occurs at the bottom of door panels, and around the edges of panels to 'round' them off so that they do not cut when touched by hand. Another typical 'hemming' would occur when two pieces of metal are put together, such as the outer and inner 'skin' of a door - the hem serves to 'glue' the two skins together. At the Yorii plant, Honda has developed smaller 'hemming' units which use rollers that are easily adaptable for most panels.

Reductions in manpower were achieved through using automation for heavy-lifting processes such as the mounting of hoods and doors. The same was achieved in the assembly processes. In addition, the assembly of instrument panels, glass, engine, suspension and tyres were also automated. One of the highlights of the tour was just watching the little robots pick up wheel nuts, and getting them fitted onto the wheels as the wheels are placed on the semi-assembled vehicle.

Note the absence of people.

One thing about the Yorii plant is the absence of people driving those little 'tractors' pulling trailers of parts to be supplied to the line - here, a relatively simple idea was to have supply lines underground, with lifts to bring up the line items right beside the station where they are needed. Here, little conveyor systems take over to move the parts right up to the assembly robot, which picks them up and puts them onto the vehicle being assembled. Somewhere within the system, there must be an intricate and detailed computerized management system to see that all the little parts get to where they belong.

Just outside the walls of the plant, there are dozens of trucks with special drop-sides carrying parts to various stations in accordance to the 'Just-in-time' system.

Part of the Yorii Plant.

At the Yorii plant, technologies to reduce the environmental footprint have been developed and put into place. These include Honda SE Paint System (Honda Smart Ecological Paint) - the system eliminates a middle coating process from a 4-coat / 3-bake process to a 3-coat / 2-bake process, saving 40 per cent of energy consumed, and a new process of absorptive paint mist removal in the bumper painting process using calcium carbonate instead of water. Elsewhere, the total energy consumed by the plant is monitored through FEMS (Facility Energy Management System).

The Yorii plant is truly something that Honda can be proud of - but being typically Japanese manufacturers, Honda wanted to share it with us, but would not even let us have some pictures to share it with our readers - no matter - what I have seen is convincing enough, and you will have to take my word for it.