common_css

manufacturing_title

Initiatives in Manufacturing

manufacturing_main

Manufacturing

Building next-generation production lines to
provide a stable supply of high-quality products

Katsumi Azuma
Member of the Board
Senior Managing Executive Officer,
in charge of Quality, Production,
General Purpose Device Business and Module Business
ROHM Apollo Co., Ltd., President

This interview was originally published in the ROHM Group Integrated Report 2024.

As stated in the “Basic Quality Assurance Policy,” ROHM has strived since its founding to be the first company to learn, study, and boldly incorporate new technologies for the “continual modernization of manufacturing systems.” ROHM’s strength that is essential for becoming a major global player is its in-house integrated production system “IDM,” which is significant for practicing quality first and increasing cost competitiveness. To take advantage of this significance, it is a prerequisite that our technical, observational, and executional capabilities exceed those of our competitors. At the same time, even if we beat other companies with our current production methods and materials, that will not last forever. We believe that efforts to further improve quality and yield are needed while utilizing the three fundamentals of manufacturing (“genba (actual place),” “genbutsu (actual thing),” and “genjitsu (actual situation)”) and ROHM’s unique know-how. Future issues are “transmission and evolution.” For transmission, we must gather together the technical knowledge of the entire Group and incorporate it into our educational materials. For evolution, we will evolve our production lines and equipment including our flexible lines, carefully examine and analyze production site “big data,” and build a management system with no “muri (overburden),” “mura (irregularities),” or “muda (waste).” Going forward, ROHM will continue to aim for evolved manufacturing in terms of both hardware (equipment) and software (management).

Enhancing our production capacity around SiC power devices may choose us with confidence.

To achieve a stable supply of SiC power devices, which are ROHM’s main products, we are expanding production capacity through prior investment. The automotive and industrial equipment markets are expected to expand due to technological innovation around electrification to reduce environmental burden and achieve carbon neutrality. Although current EV demand is weakening, future growth and the strength of demand is unchanged, and we are accelerating plans to increase our production capacity. Currently, production using 6-inch SiC wafers plays a leading role, but we are shifting to 8-inch wafers. Cost improvements of about 20% to 30% are expected for the same area, which will allow us to significantly increase the production capacity and cost performance. We are also advancing the launch of the Miyazaki Plant No. 2 acquired in October 2023 in parallel with mass production of substrates entering operation in FY2024 and devices in FY2026. The plant will be used as ROHM’s main production site going forward.

LAPIS Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (Miyazaki Plant No.2)
LAPIS Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (Miyazaki Plant No.2)

For more information

Flexible lines

The flexible lines, which integrate our uniquely cultivated technologies to automate our assembly process, began operation in April 2021. As a result, we achieved an improvement in product quality by increasing processing performance through Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA*). Moreover, we minimized variation through automation of production instructions, transportation and supply of materials and products, tool changes, and human tasks, doubling the existing labor productivity through labor-saving. In addition, the lead time was reduced to one-tenth of the existing figure by implementing process design from the planning stages. In the automotive and industrial equipment markets, many customers want a long-term, stable supply of products even in small quantities. Flexible lines make it possible to meet the needs of such customers and enable the high-quality production of a wide variety of products in small quantities. We are currently utilizing this concept line and verifying various technologies. Our immediate mission is to apply the elemental technologies obtained through this process to the unmanned wide lines under development, and deploy them to mass production plants.

* Explained in the Glossary

New_company localNavi.js

New_company common.js