THE CHALLENGE

In mid-2001, as Fujitsu began planning for enhancements to its U-Scan system—including a next generation product and several customized modules—the company recognized the need to consolidate the majority of its enclosure manufacturing with one provider.   

";Our customers measure us on quality, price and delivery, so we know how important it is to select a manufacturer who can meet the challenge of all three objectives consistently,"; says Elliot Brenhouse, vice-president, product development, Fujitsu. ";We wanted to continue to meet the highest standards in our customer delivery, while streamlining processes and management cycles to focus on value-added services for our customers.";   

As a growing company serving a developing end-user market, Fujitsu also needed a manufacturer to grow with its needs, and with whom it could work on future designs and process ideas.

THE RESULTS

As part of a lengthy comparative process, Fujitsu began working with CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions for limited projects. CMP, which has offices in Chateauguay Que., and Ottawa, is a provider of total enclosure systems for the computing, telecommunications, medical equipment, and kiosks/ATMs markets.

";When we first began working with CMP, we handed them a ready-to-build design and challenged them to find efficiencies within the manufacturing process,"; says Brenhouse. ";Their team displayed significant initiative and investment, and almost immediately demonstrated improvements in welding, painting and enclosure material that translated to end-use benefits for our customers.";   

After the initial project was a success, CMP began working more closely with Fujitsu on building an advanced version of the U-Scan system. Because CMP takes a holistic approach to enclosure manufacturing, it was able to incorporate a design team into the process to present new design ideas to Fujitsu.   

Working closely with Fujitsu's engineering group, the CMP design team created a preliminary design of an advanced U-Scan enclosure according to the company's specifications. Each week, the design team would focus on a single element of the unit, and return the following week to go over new drawings and strategies with Fujitsu.

CMP's initial efforts paid off. Today, the company is the primary enclosure supplier for Fujitsu's self-checkout product, the next generation U-Scan, which makes up over 90 percent of Fujitsu's self-checkout systems business. Unlike earlier U-Scan designs, CMP and Fujitsu worked together to develop a concept with a common foundation structure that had the capacity for added modules. This provided Fujitsu with the flexibility to customize the U-Scan system for various self-checkout needs customers might have.    

";By being able to stick with the same base components, layout, and wiring, we've been able to save a lot of time and money on developing new products for our customers' needs,"; says Brenhouse. ";Now, we are able to focus our efforts on the custom modules that we are creating, which helps us get our products to market much more quickly than before.";   

For more information about this article, contact John Soares, vice-president, CMP Design Inc., at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it