Why Focus on Remote Production Now?

“To enable making products that are traditionally assembled at the production plant at home!”

No doubt you have been affected in one way or another by spread of the COVID-19, with large portions of the manufacturing sector being forced to adjust their production schedules due to falling global demand, or workers being told to stay at home following mandatory curfews. Those of us at Roland DG’s Production Division were faced with the same situation, so we thought of various ways to get through this challenging time. One idea that was raised was to try out the concept of “remote production.”

We have always spent time discussing the way production could be continued in a safe and flexible manner in the event of unexpected situations that prevented workers from traveling to production plants, as well as looking into styles of monozukuri where workers could remain productive and motivated given that working methods and individual values are becoming increasingly diverse. The feasibility of remote production had been raised a number of times during those discussions, but the sudden changes brought upon by the COVID-19 presented a perfect opportunity to examine the potential of remote production in more detail.

Another major reason why we were able to move forward and take on this challenge is because of “D-PICS” that Roland DG uses for monozukuri. “D-PICS” is “a system that allows anybody, anywhere to assemble the same high-quality products by following instructions displayed on a network-connected PC.” We began exploring possibilities based on the idea that we could utilize D-PICS and achieve the assembly work we perform at the production plant right at home. For more information about D-PICS, visit here.

Illustration of Remote Production

Conventional Plant Production

Production Plant

Remote Production

Production Plant

Operator's Home