Ogihara America Corporation (O.A.C.) is a subsidiary of the Japanese Ogihara Corporation, one of the largest independent automotive die manufacturers in the world today.

O.A.C. is a Tier 1 supplier known for its exceptional product quality of automotive class A parts, assemblies and related body panels. O.A.C. operates in the US from two major centers: in Howell Michigan and in Birmingham, Alabama. Ogihara’s production facilities provide critical parts and assemblies to General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler as well as to several Japanese “transplants” across North America.

As part of the Ogihara tradition both O.A.C. facilities along with more than a dozen other Ogihara facilities around the world share common processes for ensuring lean and streamlined operation. Common processes help Ogihara develop and manufacture more cost effectively while ensuring the best quality for the customer at all times.

This long tradition and continuous effort to improve final product quality spurred O.A.C. to choose CogniTens products for its production and assembly facilities.

In 2001, as part of the ongoing effort to improve operational performance, Ogihara conducted a thorough evaluation of their quality processes and systems. Ogihara’s objective was to raise their quality standards even higher by transforming reactive quality processes to proactive ones, thus considerably lowering customer reported quality issues and maintaining best quality ratings. As a result of this evaluation, Ogihara’s engineers developed a unique process planned to be fully integrated into their product development and manufacturing program.

This new comprehensive quality process called for an advanced non- contact dimensional measurement system which could be easily operated in a shop floor environment and help resolve quality concern using root cause analysis methodology. However, it seemed that at that time, Ogihara had developed a process which was more advanced than the available technology and there was no product to be found which could fully meet the various Ogihara requirements.

The Solution

Following a long period of evaluations and benchmarking, Ogihara identified CogniTens’ Optigo as the only non-contact measurement system capable of meeting the demanding Ogihara criteria. Throughout tests and trials Optigo’s performance proved it was suited for versatile operation on the engineering and production floor and highly useful in supporting multiple measurement activities from die tryout to assembly tool adjustment and quick quality analysis of parts and sub-assemblies.

Initial implementation of the CogniTens products in the Howell facility took only a couple of months to complete. Then a joint team consisting of Ogihara, CogniTens and customer representatives worked together to further integrate this new solution into dozens of business processes based on Ogihara quality process guidelines. As a result of this joint effort, within a year, the new Ogihara Quality process was further enhanced and fully implemented in daily plant operations using CogniTens products.

Following the successful implementation in the Howell, Michigan facility, Ogihara expanded its use of CogniTens Optigo based solution to the Birmingham, Alabama plant producing stamping parts and sub-assemblies for a large OEM assembly plant. CogniTens’ solution was rapidly implemented in the Birmingham facility based on the experience garnered during the first stage and maintained the Ogihara tradition for process commonality and standard methods between the two facilities.

Combining Ogihara’s unique processes and quality methodologies together with CogniTens dimensional measurement platform and software products resulted in the realization of the Ogihara vision for a fully proactive quality system.