Mar 22, 2018 12:00 GMT

HS2000 Sugarcane Harvester

Thailand is currently the world's 4th largest producer and 2nd biggestexporter of sugarcane, with demand for sugarcane as a sweetener and inethanol on the rise. In 2015 we began developing the sugarcane harvester inpursuit of business expansions in farm mechanization. With the contract and delivery of the first of our HS2000 sugarcaneharvesters in February 2017, Yanmar has been working to further increasesales.

The HS2000 sugarcane harvester project started in 2015, and the final designwas put into full scale production in 2017. To find out more we spoke withHarumasa and Koji from development and Takuji and Kazuaki fromproduction.

Koji Matsuoka Development Div., Agricultural Operations Business Joined Yanmar in 2001. From 2010 Koji began working on design of the YHcombines. Prior to putting the HS2000 in production, Koji spent 4 monthstesting the harvester in Thailand.

Harumasa Kitaoka Development Div., Agricultural Operations Business Since joining Yanmar in 2011, Harumasa had been working on combinedesign. From 2015, he was stationed at Bunmei Noki where he overseesdesign of areas relating to the HS2000 engine.

Takuji Hagiwara Production Div., Bunmei Noki Joined Bunmei Noki in 1993, working in the development div. Takuji left thecompany in 1995 and returned in 2008, working in production managementand materials. Currently he oversees the entire production process.

Kazuaki Nishimura Manufacturing Management Div., Agricultural Operations Business Kazuaki has been working in combine production since entering SeireiIndustry (now Yanmar Agricultural Machinery Manufacturing) in 1993. FromApril 2017, he moved to Bunmei Noki to oversee the key manufacturingprocesses of the HS2000.

Starting from Scratch

"Our development team had no experience working on sugarcane harvestersand Bunmei Noki hadn't dealt with large size harvesters before. Everything

was a first-time for us," said Harumasa.

The HS2000 was to be equipped with an engine that has a peak power of 200horse power, which was twice as powerful as any engine that Harumasa hadworked with before in combine development. The first challenge Harumasaconfronted when designing the HS2000 with an engine of such phenomenalpower was heat balance. During harvesting, lots of dust clogs up the air-intake's mesh, requiring cleaning. To solve this issue we put our Bunmei Nokiskills to use. By reversing the fan we reversed the direction of air-flow,sending the dust back out where it belongs. However while we cleared thefirst challenge there were many more awaiting us.

"When conducting field tests in Thailand, we realized that what may becommon sense to us isn't for others. For example, harvesting implements diginto the ground during harvesting. However in Thailand their fields had 30cmradius stumps. As sugarcane harvesters operate in dense sugarcane fields, wecouldn't see these stumps; running into them and damaging the machine onmany occasions," said Koji.

In Thailand this isn't unusual, so we had to make the harvester more durable.That way even if you hit the stumps, the machine can handle it; reducingmachine downtime. It was a lengthy 4 months of trial and error, as any issuesconfronted in Thailand were dealt with by the development team back inJapan, followed by Koji confirming that the modifications worked back inThailand.

Efficient Manufacturing through Kaizen

The design stage of the HS2000 was complete, so it was taken to the factoryfor improvements.

"The production quota of 20 units per year that I was given was impossible atthe time of the initial talks," said Takuji. While we had staff from Bunmei Nokiwith their extensive experience in manufacturing, each person contributeddifferent production and assembly know-how. Kazuaki was the first tofacilitate the digitalization of processes inside the factory. As Bunmei Nokihad only recently joined the Yanmar Group in 2014, Yanmar's partsmanagement system had not yet been implemented, and the management ofparts was often left up to the know-how of the factory staff.

"When I was first stationed at Bunmei Noki, it sometimes took half a day justto find a part. To make it so that anyone could find parts easily, we installedshelves in the parts warehouse and created a digital system for looking upthe parts location," said Kazuaki.

The team worked with the experienced personnel at Bunmei Noki to improvethe management of parts needed for production. By enabling all staff to beable to pick inventory easily, greatly improved manufacturing efficiency.Leveraging the performance capacity of all staff was the catalyst, leading to aseries of further improvements facilitated by the factory personnel.

"Thanks to Kazuaki, Kazutomo Kitamura (Manufacturing Management Div.,Agricultural Operations Business), Masaru Iwashita (Bunmei Noki) and otherAgricultural Operations Business and Yanmar Agricultural MachineryManufacturing staff, we were able to optimize factory processes, enabling usto meet the production quota," said Takuji.

"I'm grateful to everyone at Bunmei Noki who was always open to our ideasand proposals. It is thanks to their zeal and initiative that we could achievesuch a short lead time. There is a lot that we can learn from them", saidKazuaki.

Real Life Evaluations from Customers

Once the production lines started rolling in May 2017, the Yanmardevelopment team returned to Okayama, Japan where we continued toprovide support.

"Now it's over to the customers to put them into action and give us feedback.I'm sure they will point out a lot of things, and we will take this on board andrespond," said Harumasa.

"I heard from others that the reason our first HS2000 customer bought it wasnot because of the product itself, but because of the services and supportthat we provide with our products" spoke Koji in response. "This is thanks tothe continued hard work put in by our sales and service staff at YSP. I'mdetermined not to let them down by continuing to create products that willhelp our customers succeed and deliver added value," he continued excitedly.

Note: Information contained in the news release is valid at the time ofpublication and may differ from the most recently available information.

[Inquiries for further information]

Public Relations Group Brand Communication Division, Yanmar GlobalExpert Co., Ltd.,

TEL: 06-6376-6212　 E-mail: newsroom@yanmar.com

Contacts

Akihiro NakanishiPress ContactDivisional ManagerPublic Relations Groupakihiro_nakanishi@yanmar.com(+81)6 6376 6212

Paul BartelsPress ContactPublic Relations Grouppaul_bartels@yanmar.com(+81)6 6376 6212