Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit Fujitsu Isotec’s plant in Fukushima upon their invitation. Before I move ahead, I would like to thank all the Fujitsu Isotec Staff for the information they provided and their hospitality. And now, Get on board the news to have a nice company tour with us of course accompanied by some info:

Having its roots back in 1957 in Kamata in Tokyo’s Ota Ward as producer of type writers under the company name “Kawasaki Telecommunications Industry”( joint venture of Fuji Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturing and Kawasaki Telecommunications Industry), Fujitsu Isotec moved to its current location in Fukushima Prefecture in 1975 and has been operating under its present company name since 1985. In an area of 79,816 m2, Fujitsu Isotec Plant has facilities for various business activities: Manufacturing of PRIMERGY brand (IA) Servers (2001～), FMV brand (Esprimo and Deskpower)Desktop PCs,and Printers (design, manufacturing and sales) “Serial Dot Matrix ,Thermal and Label Printers”; Infra Service Center and Recycle Center.

This time I had the chance to visit (IA) server production facility, Infra Service Center and Recycle Center and will introduce them to you accompanied by on-the-spot pictures. Let’s start with (IA) server and Infra Service Center and in the following news expose you to the recycling world of Fujitsu Isotec.

In the (IA) server facility, basically all the components of the servers are assembled, tested, go through quality control and packaged to be delivered. They work on BTO (build to order) basis and assembled parts on the wheeled carriers move on an automatic band, then attached to the operation line manually and travels as such until the server is complete. Finally, it is packed. The detail that impressed me most was the protruding metal hills on carriages which facilitate the transfer of the assembled parts from one carriage to the other by only sliding. Smart solution, indeed.

Regarding the ever increasing importance given by Fujitsu Group to its (IA) server business, Fujitsu Isotec plant together with its brother plant (Fujitsu Technology Solutions) in Augsburg Germany as the main manufacturers of (IA) servers within the Fujitsu Limited group have acquired an ever pivotal role to realize their goal of doubling their worldwide (IA) server sales to 500,000 units by 2010.

Implementation of the Toyota Production System (TPS)’s just-in-time principle and on-the-spot handling of the problem during the production process to guarantee good products approach starting with 2003 already bore its concrete positive results reflected in productivity and efficiency. And in addition to that, the recent full acquisition of the Fujitsu Siemens computers (Fujitsu Technology Solutions now) in April this year are deemed to be two milestone steps on the way to this main target.

As to the Infra Service that Fujitsu Isotec has been offering since 2008, it provides their customers with the option to have full service at the Fujitsu site. In other words, after the assembly of the servers they ordered are complete, they are all mounted on the racks, if required software, storage and other types of hardware are also all installed in the infra site, then delivered to the customers fully ready to use. Whereas before, all of them used to be delivered to the customers’ facility with Fujitsu Staff supervising the whole mounting process over there. Pretty good service option for customers, indeed considering the space and time that it takes otherwise.