Exaquantum Traveling Sales Diary

It is said that economic recovery is just around the corner, but manufacturers continue to hold back on making investments. As usual, I have been on the road selling products that will benefit my customers by reducing their raw material costs and improving production efficiency. But what I hear is that they have very tight budgets and have not yet been given approval to make investments this fiscal year. Against this very challenging backdrop, I wish to tell you about a very lively trade show that I came across, the 1st Highly-functional Film Technology Expo, also known as FilmTech Japan.

Yokogawa exhibited a variety of products at this show including a solution that uses multivariable pattern analysis to improve the productivity of the film-making process. Most of the exhibitors were from film-making companies, or companies selling production equipment, control systems, or analytical or measurement instruments for analyzing the film coming off production lines. Yokogawa was the only company introducing a multivariable pattern analysis solution that would improve film quality and manufacturing productivity. I usually find it interesting at an exhibition to display something different from what is being shown by all the other companies. Everything about our booth was quite different from all the others, which mainly displayed manufacturing equipment and test and inspection machines. Displaying our products on PCs, I almost had the feeling that we were in the wrong place.

At the Yokogawa booth we exhibited an alarm system that had been designed using the results of an analysis of data from film manufacturers. These systems generate alarms when a failure or quality problem is predicted. Based on a comparison of the data for good quality and out-of-specification products and an "analysis of the causes of quality failure" is of quality problems that identifies which process data is at fault, the system performs real-time quality monitoring to predict the quality of the products coming off the production line. Rather than just checking whether temperatures or pressures are within the set Hi/Lo range for a process, it monitors whether product quality is within prescribed Hi/Lo levels. When the process data goes beyond these boundaries, the system generates an alarm and notifies the operator of the probable cause.

Well, my first concern was whether anyone would come to our booth…. But they came! At first, they were looking at our booth from a distance. Once inside, they listened intently to our explanations, asked many questions, expressed their admiration with how carefully the system was configured, and left convinced. Many stayed in our booth quite a long time to find out more about this system and a long queue formed outside because we didn’t have that many people to explain this very new technology. It made me think that we might need to distribute admission tickets. When our presentations were over, the visitors well understood how powerful this system was, and started to talk about the problems they had in their own plants. "Our line productivity is not very good - perhaps the situation is more or less the same for all film manufacturers." "Our product quality is inconsistent. We are overly dependent on the skills of our most experienced operators." "I wonder why outcomes vary when we are using exactly the same production settings every time." "What a mess we have when film sheets break!" Everyone sounded quite serious. Several customers also told us how wonderful they thought the system was and said that was what they needed. They asked us to visit them as soon as possible. Guess what, it looks like the chief presenter at this booth is now on the road more frequently than I ever have been.

I took the opportunity to look around at the various exhibits at FilmTech Japan and learned that there were many different applications for highly functional films: extremely thin (nano level) films, flat panel displays, touch panels, separators for lithium batteries, heat sinks, and so on. I thought that this multivariable pattern analysis would be a lifesaver for a market where films are being manufactured everywhere and used widely in new fields, if only manufacturers could set their minds to finding solutions to their problems.

Improving the productivity of the film-making process itself has high added value, but I am not insisting on it alone. Based on an analysis of the various data and the issues reported by our customers, we have found solutions to many interesting problems. Why does pressure, temperature, and liquid level hunting occur in a distillation tower? For a reactor that, on average, experiences a shutdown once a month, is there any indication that could be used to predict an impending shutdown five hours in advance? Can we guess why the heat transfer efficiency is varying in a heat exchanger? Can we manage the operating status of a steam turbine or distillation tower? Can we detect why an expensive pump has failed? We have had many such successes. As these initial analyses brought such benefits, our customers have started to wonder whether they could ask us to analyze more high-value processes. There are several customers who have offered to work in association with Yokogawa to configure an alarm system that will detect imbalances online. I am expecting that my next diary entry will focus on this system.

For the past several weeks, the weather has been very changeable in Tokyo. It seems like spring was hardly here before it left again, and even though the calendar said it was spring the weather wasn’t very warm and the cherry blossoms were slow to come out. And after all the blossoms were gone, it snowed in Tokyo in mid-April for the first time in 41 years. Vegetable prices soared because of the unstable weather and this has been a strain on our household budget as I have been trying for health reasons to eat more vegetables and less meat. Under those unfavorable circumstances, I have been seeking out tasty restaurants in those towns that I have been visiting on business. Of course I cannot afford to dine at expensive restaurants, something my VigilantPlant Express editors would never pay for, and so I have had no choice but to find something that is good yet cheap. This time, I was in Hakata, which is in Fukuoka Prefecture.

All kinds of delicious foods from around the Kyushu region are available in Hakata, but there are also many good local foods including fresh squid, horse mackerel from the Genkai Sea, pork-bone based soup Hakata ramen, and bite sized gyoza (Chinese dumplings). Hakata is also known for its shochu, a distilled alcoholic beverage made principally from barley. But there are many other shochu varieties made from sweet potatoes and rice. All these good things are available in Nakasu, a shopping and entertainment district that is a little west of Hakata Station, on an island between the Nakagawa and Hakatagawa rivers. I walked down streets along the riverbanks that were lined with food stalls. I remember from my childhood seeing food stalls being pulled on carts by their owners. That is a thing of the past, and nowadays most carts are kept in the same place. At closing time the proprietors just dismantle and bundle away the stalls, and then around noon the next day they put them up again. I wondered why they don't just keep them out all the time or make them big enough so that they could be locked. But putting aside such trivial questions, I picked one of the stalls nearest to the entrance of the Nakasu district, one that was listed in the foreign guidebooks.

All the seats were taken at the stall and I noticed three women standing nearby, waiting their turn. Once I got seated I realized that more than half of the patrons were female tourists. In Tokyo, such stalls are frequented mainly by men, and it is unusual to find one full of so many women. So, I felt a bit out of place all by myself at that stall, but lost no time ordering some oden, beef tendon, and barley shochu, all of which can be had cheaply in Japan. No matter how cheap everything was, I think this is the best combination of dishes to be had with shochu whenever I go to a food stall. The beef tendon was so tender that it made me wonder how many hours it had been cooked. I smiled with the first bite. It tasted great and there was lots of it. While I was enjoying my food, the three women who were sitting next to me were still wondering what to order. They finally agreed that they would conclude their meal by having some Hakata ramen , but did not seem interested in having any alcohol. It seemed they were having a hard time trying to decide what else to eat, something that would help fill up their small stomachs. I offered to help, saying, "What about the beef tendon? It's really good!" But all they said was, "Oh, is that so?." And they did not order beef tendon. I was disappointed that my attempt to converse with them failed. If they had turned toward me, I would have offered them a bowl of beef tendon and asked them where they came from. But it was just a waste of time. I should not have even thought of talking to them. So I just kept drinking my barley shochu, mumbling to myself how silly I had been, and left the stall when I had emptied my glass and cleaned my plates.

After leaving the food stall, I headed for a nearby supermarket to find some stuff that I always take home with me from Hakata. It was soy sauce. The soy sauce in Kyushu is sweeter and thicker than the soy sauce that you get in the Tokyo (Kanto) region. I think it is quite tasty and that it goes better with sashimi (raw fish) because it is thicker and adheres better to the fish. People from the Kanto region have no idea what to make of a sweet soy sauce while those in Kyushu say that Kanto soy sauce is salty. The Kyushu sauce makes a cheap yet most welcome gift for those people from Kyushu living in Tokyo. Of course they sell this at the airport, but only the top brands are available, and the variety is not all that great. So, I always buy my sauce at a local supermarket, getting small plastic bottles of it for 200 or 300 yen apiece. I used to also buy barley shochu and miso (soy bean paste) made from barley, but I quit doing that because it weighed too much and, besides, was readily available in the Kanto region. But it is really hard to find sweet soy sauce in my Tokyo neighborhood. So this time around, as my supply was running out, I bought six bottles. That should last me about six months, just in case I don’t have another chance for a good long while to come to Kyushu. And on my way to the airport, I was already thinking how I could find a way to get back sooner to Kyushu to enjoy some fresh seafood and other tasty local foods.