Alps Electric, a multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, is producing electronic devices, such as switches, sensors, and display panels.
The company supplies about 40,000 types of electronic components to more than 2,000 manufacturing companies across the world.
Those precision parts are used in consumer electronics, mobile devices, automotive and industrial equipments.
Their global unified quality parts supply has been backed up with precise mold technology and quality evaluation system.
The Alps Electric Kitahara factory is taking advantage of the precision processing technology to manufacture molds for use in producing various electronic parts.
The factory invites trainee from their manufacturing bases located in Asian countries such as in Malaysia, to learn a variety of techniques such as wire-cut electrical discharge machining and machine grinding.
This micro puzzle cube is made by the advanced mold technology in which seams are almost unrecognisable.
Electric parts have been mass-produced from these molds manufactured by the precision techniques.
Those parts such as micro switches are used in familiar products like smartphones, mobile devices and car interior components.
The quality of the products is managed by various evaluation equipments, and quality management system of ALPS established globally.
Katsunori Rikiyasu of the Reliability Evaluation Group, ALPS Electric Co., Ltd., said, “ALPS Electric has introduced the quality engineering in early stage. By establishing unique verification system to prevent defective product to our customers, we are working on quality improvement activities by utilizing quality engineering.”
He added, “We dispatch our Failure Analysis members to our affiliated production and sales companies incorporated in Europe, North America, ASEAN, China and Korea. We support customer service in cooperation with the members in each country. We deploy our members to closer to our customers in each region in order to follow up customer’s demands promptly.”
In Japan, the conventional techniques go hand in hand with traditional methods.
Every early morning, the auction sale starts in OTA market, one of The Central Wholesale Market in Tokyo.
The market dates back to the Edo-era. Then thorough the social unrest such as rice shortage in 1918, the “Central Wholesale Market Law” was enacted in March 1923.
Now, tonnes of goods are gathered from all over Japan and sold by auction here in OTA market.
Hiroko Nagamine, Senior director, Ota Market, Central Wholesale Market, said, “The Central Wholesale Market has two big purposes. The first is for stable supply of products. The second is fair price formation.”
OTA market is the biggest Central market in Tokyo which is located near Tokyo bay and has an area of about 400,000 square meters.
It not only sells vegetables and fruits but flower and fish also.
Flowers are handled through “Mechanized auction”, using computers. A lot of flowers are sold for a moment.
In fish market, they sell fresh fish collected from all over Japan. They also treat living fish and that is OTA market’s specialty.
Imported goods are also sold in the market. Items like lobster are imported from Canada.
Nagmine further said, “We don’t just gather the goods and sell here. Perishable products get spoiled easily and are difficult to preserve. It’s important to keep freshness of the products and deliver them from producers to consumers safely. This market plays a role as a “freshness-keeper”.
OTA Market is firmly supporting people’s daily life in Tokyo.
(ANI)