Our company expanded the technical centre in Fujitsu General (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., an air conditioner manufacturing subsidiary, to promote the localisation of product designing for the expansion of air conditioner business. Thereby, we aim to promote the improvement of technical setup directly linked to the production site and parts/material makers and strengthen the cost competitiveness.

The new technical centre was constructed as a new building next to the current technical centre to reinforce the Japanese staff and local engineers and staff taking charge of designing, production engineering, parts and material procurement, quality control, etc. and expand the local designing capacity by equipping the latest test facility including calorie meter, anechoic room, environmental test room.

Also, the device to enhance the communication between the development site and the production site of products and parts/materials is adopted such as the "VE study room" to discuss the improvement of designing for cost reduction with parts/material vendors using production prototype and the connecting corridor linked to the production site.

By the construction of new building, the total floor area of the technical centre increased to 4,795m² (about 2.5 times of the previous area) and the number of staff increased to 130 (about 1.3 times of the previous staff). The full-fledged operation started from April 25, 2013. The total investment amount is about 720 million yen.

Since 2011, our company has been building up the engineering setup to coordinate closely with parts makers and production site by locating the engineering department to the production site, and as the first step, introduced economy-type home-use small-size inverter air conditioners to Chinese and European markets in March, 2012.

By the reinforcement of the technical centre this time, we will promote the further total cost reduction by implementing the measures leading to the enhancement of production efficiency of products and parts from the early stage of designing and the reduction of materials to use.

We will expand the business in the air conditioner markets by strengthening the development of core technology such as energy-saving efficiency and compliance with refrigerant regulations as well as the development of high performance products and standardization of design in Japan and at the same time, promoting the localization of product designing and the development of competitive products.

by Fujitsu General Australia | Apr 26, 2013