Daihen is going to increase by 1.5 times the domestic and overseas production capacity of robots in order to reinforce its whole international business with an investment of about 900 million yen.

At present Daihen has one domestic site to produce robots of Rokko Business Operation (located in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture), and an overseas production is carried out by Daihen Advanced Machinery, 100% owned affiliate which is located in Changshu City of Jiangsu Province, China having a plant to produce large-type delivery robots.

At first the production line at the domestic production site of Rokko will be reformed within May, when an automatic production system will be robotized to raise the production from 7 up to 10,000 units, with an increase by a little bit over 40%.

In China and other Asian countries, there is a remarkable advance in investment for automation with yearly increase in demand for robots. The sales of Daihen’s Mechatronics Division owes by 70% to its overseas business and is growing at a pace of 20% annually comparing with preceding years. Regionally, sales to Asian countries including China accounts for more than 60%.

As the number of robots delivered from Rokko in 2013 came to exceed that of previous year by more than 10%, Daihen decided to increase its production capacity by 40% up to 10,000 units.

The automated production system at this time is aimed for saving of manpower as much as possible and improving the production efficiency by means of robotization of each production process through the promoted automation of line. Practically, in the robot production line, the number of operators is reduced by 25%. Regarding the reduction of personnel, the company expects to enhance also its sales force by shifting the excess personnel of production or indirect division to the sales division.

Furthermore, in order to expand the sales of multijoint robots of small type for which demand is growing in China, Daihen Advanced Machinery which is the production base of large-type LCP delivery robot for Chinese market is also going to start producing the small multijoint robots in the coming summer as the first case of production abroad in the field. An annual production is planned to be 1,000 units and will be increased up to 3,000 units in 2016.

Daihen is ambitious to say that its share of arc welding robots in the world market is targeted at 30% to 40% more than the current position, taking in the tremendously growing demand in China and other Asian countries.