Nidec Elevator Motors: Responding to Market "Changes" with the "Way" of Balance

In today's era of rapidly changing market demands, an enterprise's core competitiveness has extended from mere product quality to the overall efficiency of the entire chain, spanning from order placement to product delivery. "Balanced production scheduling" and "flexible smart manufacturing" are the keys to connecting this chain. Balanced production scheduling prevents the waste of production resources while accurately matching customer needs; flexible smart manufacturing not only meets customers' differentiated requirements but also enables efficient order delivery. To achieve these goals, systematic reforms are required across multiple dimensions, including concepts, technologies, processes, and organizational structures.

I. Cross-Departmental Coordination: Accurate Demand Forecasting and Rapid Response

Order placement by the sales department marks the starting point of the entire chain, making accurate demand forecasting crucial. Nidec Elevator Motors breaks down inter-departmental barriers and adopts a "iron triangle" management model, oriented toward customer service. The sales and marketing departments formulate preliminary SIOP (Sales, Inventory, and Operations Planning) plans through market research, data analysis, and other methods. Meanwhile, the planning department organizes monthly SIOP meetings involving sales, engineering, production, procurement, quality, and other departments to review future market demands, address the dynamic balance between supply and demand, make well-informed decisions in advance, stay ahead of the market, and accurately grasp market needs to enable rapid responses upon receiving orders.

II. Balanced Production Scheduling and Dynamic Plan Management to Break the Production Dilemma of "Extremes of Busy and Idle"

Nidec Elevator Motors implements the APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) system. Based on factors such as order urgency and resource availability, it formulates scientific and reasonable production plans. Through balanced production scheduling, it avoids resource waste in the production process; by setting production takt time, it ensures efficient operation of the production line while reducing inventory backlogs. By achieving balanced production scheduling, Nidec Elevator Motors can respond more quickly to market changes and shorten the time from production to delivery of products.

The core of dynamic plan management lies in making flexible adjustments to cope with changes, and the formulation of production plans is key, requiring it to connect the past and the future and flexibly adapt to various delivery requirements. Nidec Elevator Motors manages plans through strategic plans, medium-term plans, monthly plans, weekly plans, and daily plans. Through the systematic management of these five-level plans, it achieves seamless connection from macro-strategies to micro-execution, improving resource utilization and goal achievement rates.

1. Balanced production scheduling ensures the continuity and smoothness of production plans, avoiding drastic fluctuations in the production process;

2. Through balanced production scheduling, enterprises can allocate resources more rationally, ensure the efficient operation of production lines, improve the utilization efficiency of equipment and human resources, and reduce costs while increasing efficiency;

3. Balanced production scheduling helps control inventory levels, reduce inventory backlogs, and lower warehousing costs;

4. A balanced production rhythm helps maintain the stability of product quality and avoid quality issues caused by rushing to meet deadlines.

III. Production Execution: Intelligent Material Control and Implementation Methods of Balanced Production Scheduling

In the production execution phase, the ability to respond quickly and make dynamic adjustments is crucial. Enterprises need to monitor production progress in real time and promptly address issues arising during production, such as equipment failures and material shortages. In the elevator component manufacturing industry, intelligent material control is a core link for improving efficiency, reducing costs, and ensuring quality. Nidec Elevator Motors combines an intelligent control model with advanced material control tools such as PFEP (Plan for Every Part). The APS system predicts material shortages and automatically generates replenishment orders to improve the material kitting rate. At the same time, it is equipped with an intelligent warehousing system that can quickly locate required materials and deliver them to production workstations in a timely manner, thereby improving production efficiency and product quality and achieving the effect of reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

Balanced production scheduling addresses this dilemma through the dual approach of "total volume balance" and "load balance".

• Analyze production load: Evaluate the load of each production link to ensure the stable distribution of workload across all stages;

• Optimize production processes: Reduce production bottlenecks through process reengineering and technological improvements to achieve smooth production processes;

• Implement dynamic adjustments: Flexibly adjust production plans based on real-time data monitoring to respond to changes in the market and resources;

• Reserve buffer capacity and material safety stock: Through historical data analysis, reserve a certain proportion of production capacity as a buffer to cope with uncertainties in production and urgent customer orders; set a reasonable safety stock level based on material consumption rate and supply chain stability to ensure production is not interrupted due to material shortages;

• Data-driven rapid decision-making: Make quick response decisions through real-time data analysis, predictive maintenance, and supply chain optimization.

IV. Digital Empowerment to Respond Quickly to Market Changes

Nidec Elevator Motors has independently developed systems such as SRM (Supplier Relationship Management), MES (Manufacturing Execution System), APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling), WMS (Warehouse Management System), and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance). It builds the entire intelligent production system through automation, digitalization, modeling, visualization, integration, and intelligence, empowering the realization of balanced production scheduling and flexible smart manufacturing, and laying a solid foundation for the future realization of a "lighthouse factory".

The implementation of balanced production scheduling is inseparable from the collaborative cooperation of departments such as sales, engineering, supply chain management, procurement, production, and logistics. This collaboration is the underlying logic of rapid response, and the key core of rapid response lies in information feedback and communication, as well as the continuous in-depth improvement of the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle.

Conclusion: Responding to Market "Changes" with the "Way" of Balance

In the current context of increasingly fierce competition in the manufacturing industry, "rapid response" is no longer a choice but a necessity for survival. However, true rapid response is not about exchanging "overdrawing resources" for speed; instead, it is about building an efficient, stable, and resilient production system based on "balanced production scheduling and flexible smart manufacturing".

The essence of balanced production scheduling is respect for production laws—reducing fluctuations through scientific planning and responding to the changing market with a stable rhythm. When an enterprise achieves balanced production scheduling, rapid response is no longer a "thrilling emergency rescue" but a "calm and unhurried dispatch". With the in-depth application of digital and intelligent technologies, the strategic value of Nidec Elevator Motors in flexible production will be further enhanced. It will become a practitioner of lean production, an important driving force for the enterprise's continuous innovation and excellent operations, and the most solid backing for serving customers. Only by taking "stability" as the foundation can we move forward steadily; only by taking "balance" as the way can we respond to endless changes.