Fujitsu and YKK Jointly Develop Factory Energy Management System (FEMS)

Tokyo, June 25, 2012

Fujitsu today announced that it has collaborated with YKK Corporation in developing a Factory Energy Management System (FEMS) for YKK as part of the company's environmental initiatives. The new system has begun operating in the Fastening Product Group's Metallic Materials Manufacturing Department located at the company's Kurobe Plant, which manufactures fasteners.

The new FEMS enables visualization of energy consumption by attaching power sensors to each piece of production equipment, such as the melting furnace, and collecting real-time data from each sensor in one-minute increments. In addition to enabling the identification and replication of manufacturing best practices by comparing and analyzing manufacturing conditions at each plant, resulting in reduced energy consumption, the use of the FEMS has also led to improvements in manufacturing quality and efficiency in the fastener production process.

YKK plans to expand the use of the system to other YKK Group businesses and to the Fastening Product Group's manufacturing facilities outside of Japan.

Background

As part of its group-wide goal to become an environmentally friendly company, YKK is actively pursuing an environmental management strategy that places the highest priority on achieving harmony with the environment. In light of these efforts, the company has set forth a specific target for the end of fiscal 2012 of reducing CO2 emissions across operations in Japan by 23% compared to fiscal 1990.

System Overview

Developed as part of a collaboration between YKK and Fujitsu, the new FEMS performs visualization in order to enable YKK to reduce its energy consumption and CO2 emissions. As the first step in deploying the system, operations were launched in April at the company's Metal Materials Manufacturing Division, which accounts for approximately 25% of the energy (crude oil equivalent) consumed by YKK's fastener manufacturing operations in Japan.

In addition, by using this system for data analysis and quality analysis, production quality and productivity can be improved.

Going forward, YKK plans to expand the use of the system to other YKK Group businesses and to the Fastening Product Group's manufacturing facilities outside of Japan. The company expects to leverage the expertise gained through this project to reduce the energy consumption, electricity use, and CO2 emissions of the entire YKK Group.

For its part, Fujitsu plans to apply the know-how gained in building the new system to its Energy Management System (EMS) solutions business. Fujitsu will also continue to leverage ICT to provide a full range of support to the YKK Group's global quality and environmental management initiatives.