Mitsubishi Electric launches online virtual factory tours

Industry 4.0 and digital manufacturing are now popular terms being discussed in the manufacturing industry, but when companies start their journey in digital manufacturing, many of them look for best practices and how they could reference such practices in their factories.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Mitsubishi Electric’s factories in Nagoya and Fukuyama, Japan, attracted thousands of visitors from around the world interested to learn how the factory automation manufacturer leverages digital manufacturing to make its own products.

Although it may still be difficult to travel across borders easily, Mitsubishi Electric’s Virtual Factory Tour overcomes these restrictions, allowing visitors to walk through the various technologies and solutions behind the manufacture of its factory automation (FA) products. The tours are available in the form of online videos to everyone visiting the company’s FA website.

Mitsubishi Electric has also renewed its Online Mechatronics Solution Center, where visitors can learn about the company’s range of processing machines, computerised numerical controllers (CNCs) and other machine tools in a virtual showroom.

Two Virtual Factory Tours are available online: PLC production and power monitoring/distribution product manufacturing.

The first tour will show how Mitsubishi Electric’s MELSEC brand FA controller products are made at its Nagoya Works, providing examples of some of the actual work processes in the factory and demonstrating the latest manufacturing technologies.

The second factory tour will introduce the production lines at Mitsubishi Electric’s Fukuyama Works, which utilise the company’s integrated FA-IT solution ‘e-F@ctory’ to achieve digital manufacturing. Fukuyama Works develops and manufactures a variety of devices related to electrical distribution, from power distribution and protection devices to measurement and control devices. The tour includes the circuit breaker line and the printed circuit board line, and highlights how processes were improved using artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies.

Mitsubishi Electric’s Virtual Factory Tour can be visited at https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/cxcenter/factory.