お問い合わせ
wattXplorer Case Study
Harauma Kasei Co.,Ltd.
Introduction of Harauma Kasei Co., Ltd.
Business Contents
Harauma Kasei Co., Ltd., headquartered in Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture, operates under the management philosophy of “Customer First” and “Quality First,” and specializes in plastic molding.
The company’s main business includes plastic injection molding, a wide variety of painting, printing,
and assembly processing. They handle both primary and secondary processing of plastic resin used mainly
in automobile and factory parts as well as OA equipment components.
In primary processing, they carry out resin molding including mold production. In secondary
processing, they offer services such as one-coat piano black painting, high-gloss silver painting,
intricate silk-screen printing requiring high precision, and ultrasonic welding assembly.
With 48 employees (as of February 2025) and a founding year of 1976, Harauma Kasei will celebrate
its 50th anniversary in 2026. It is one of Shiga’s leading companies, known for high technical
capabilities and an integrated production system that meets customer needs.
We had the opportunity to interview President Junichi Harauma of Harauma Kasei Co., Ltd.
Background of Introducing wattXplorer
President Harauma：
I attended a seminar by the Kinki Bureau of Economy, Trade and
Industry, where I heard, “Sooner or later, you will be required
to calculate your CO2 emissions. Companies that don’t take action
will be left behind and may not be allowed to continue existing
as businesses.” At the time, I didn’t feel the urgency, but
coincidentally, one of our products lost its coating specification
due to CO2-related regulations, and we had to switch to bare
resin. That was when I realized we had to take action. I consulted
with a professor introduced by my seminar advisor from my alma mater, Ryukoku University. He told me,
“First, you need to measure.” Although we had annual data on electricity, water, and gasoline usage,
he pointed out the need to measure each molding machine individually. Since we had never done this
before and didn’t know how, I asked for advice. I was introduced to a very expensive measuring device,
but equipping every machine would be too costly. Around that time, I was introduced to President Wada
of Kyokko Electric by someone from the Industrial Support Plaza. I called him, and he said they were
developing a solution. He asked if I’d like to be a monitor user. I gladly accepted, and that was
how we got started.
Issues before installing wattXplorer
President Harauma：
We didn’t know how to measure the power consumption of each molding machine. I had almost no
knowledge of electricity—not even what “power factor” meant.
When I shared this with President Wada, he gave me a 30-minute lecture. I learned a lot of things
for the first time. It was incredibly educational.
What I noticed after installing the wattXplorer
President Harauma：
Coming from a completely non-technical background, I was shocked when we installed wattXplorer.
I realized, “This is not just a measuring device!” It would be a waste to use it as just a simple
measurement tool.
。
What amazed me was that I could see “the electrical activity of each shot.”
From this, I noticed that under normal conditions, the current waveform from the molding machine is
stable. I began wondering: “What happens if that waveform fluctuates? Could this be used for anomaly
detection?”
This led to discovering that
current peaks at night were
increasing. We found out this
was due to the heater turning
on frequently in winter nights
when indoor temperatures dropped.
A single dataset revealed so many things—it was fascinating and impressive.
Another example was detecting wear on the check ring. This part wears out easily, causing the resin
to leak and reducing the force, which leads to defects.
We happened to replace one and noticed a waveform change before and after. That got me hooked even
more, to be honest.
Installation status of wattXplorer
The system has been installed on 13 resin molding machines owned by Harauma Kasei Co., Ltd. as measurement targets.
Future prospects
President Harauma：
In future developments, we believe that it may become possible to detect equipment abnormalities,
as mentioned above, and to handle production management such as production volume.
We believe that by being able to collect data such as operating time, setup time, and number of shots,
we will be able to understand the progress of production in real time.We think that this can be used
as part of a production management system, in other words as part of data collection. In fact, the
molding machine itself is also capable of collecting data, but the amount of data tends to be large
because too much of the various data is collected. On the other hand, with warrXplorer, the CSV data
is small and can be saved as is, with only the necessary information such as current values. Our
company has introduced RPA, so we believe this is possible if we set it up to automatically import
the data, and we would like to continue this type of initiative in the future. If we can work together
with Kyokuko Denki in the software field, I think this is truly the way of thinking about DX. I owe
it all to President Wada for coming to this way of thinking.
Messages to other companies
President Harauma：
The wattXplorer is a product with many possibilities, not only for visualizing power
consumption, but also for applications such as abnormality monitoring and production
management. Also, Kyokko Electric has been working with us to solve any problems we have,
which we are very grateful for.
Other free interviews
President Harauma：
President Wada always says, "The concept of our products is
retrofit, that is, products that can be added on to existing
equipment." When you add something to a product, no matter what
company it is, you have to buy accessories and change the PLC
settings, which is a lot of work. Contractors also have to come
and it costs a lot of money.
In contrast, he says, "Our products can be easily attached to
existing equipment and can be used immediately. We manufacture our
products with this as our biggest selling point." Once attached, anyone can measure and collect data,
which is a great idea.
From the perspective of IoT, we take daily reports for production management, but currently they are
written by hand by the workers. We have instructed them to shorten the setup time, but first we want
to manage the time accurately, so it would be helpful if we could measure it automatically. And if we
could press a button that says "This product is now being processed," and measure it, and also be able
to switch between displaying standard documents, inspection management charts, etc. on the display,
it would be nice, and it would have a very high-tech feel, and that's what I would like to do.
The reason is that we want to relocate our factory in the near future. We want to consolidate as
many things as possible to increase the production efficiency of the factory, reduce unnecessary
movements, curb electricity consumption, and reduce CO2 emissions. Currently, the average age of our
employees is young, but in 10 years, everyone will be 10 years older. We need to take some kind of
action to keep the company going. It's not necessarily true that we will have more people, so we need
to think about running the company with fewer people and commercialize it. Therefore, we would like
to use Kyokko Electric's products and thoroughly automate the factory itself. I dream of being able
to create such an ideal factory.
Dear President Harauma of Harauma Kasei Co., Ltd. Thank you very much for your loving and valuable
opinion.
