The Facility and Equipment Maintenance Team is in charge of the safety of the Yamanashi Plant and all its operations, reliably supplying utilities, like electricity, water, gas and air, and maintaining and repairing production equipment. Team member Daichi Osada is always ready with his tool box to quickly respond to an SOS from anywhere in the plant.

“The plant has a lot of different machines in operation. To maintain and repair them we have to know the manufacturer, year, model, specs and characteristics of each. I was once flabbergasted with a German-language plan for an imported machine,” he says.

“What’s most important with machine trouble is keeping a flexible mind. When it’s hard to identify the cause of a given problem, we need to have a big picture of the equipment from various standpoints, in terms of the electrical circuitry, power mechanisms, etc., without assuming the most likely source of the problem. We never forget to ask the operators to describe the situation when the problem occurred.”

“When the equipment stops for an extended period, production is hurt. When it takes too much time to find a solution, I come under pressure to hurry up. This job brings me many opportunities to grow. I think about the causes of a given problem and explore the specific place in the equipment that’s not working well. The process helps me understand each machine better, and the hard experience is useful in the next challenge. Above all else, the joy of putting a machine back in order is tremendous.”

“I’m still inexperienced compared with my superiors. My knowledge base has grown little by little, and I have developed a knack for quickly handling situations. The top priority is a quick recovery of the equipment. I want to make it a habit to take the correct action quickly. When wiring is incomplete, for instance, the problem recurs even if the machine looks to be working fine right after the repair. To prevent the trouble coming back, I make myself consciously work carefully while moving quickly. When a similar problem occurs in a specific part of a machine, I look at it from various angles, asking myself whether it’s a structural or system problem, workplace issue, or pilot error before taking the action to resolve it. Prevention is also important, like replacing parts at the recommended frequency for a given period.”

It’s hard to evaluate numerically what we do on the Facility and Equipment Maintenance Team. I think the value of our work is in flexible response to any contingency and full support for production. By building experience I want to become a reliable stagehand for the people on the production floor, who can say with confidence and relief, “everything will be okay, we have Osada!”