Interview Passing the Baton of Technology and Passion A Young Team’s
DMS Development Story
(Part 1)

My primary responsibility is developing biosensing technologies for DMS. In addition, I examine ways to better meet customer performance requirements, and I am involved in the entire process of preparing DMS for mass production. This includes the preparation and standardization of various documents to ensure the quality of the final product. As a sales engineer, I also frequently join Ueda-san and other sales colleagues in customer meetings. Furthermore, I often work with the hardware team on quality improvement, meeting with Design Section-A, where Yamasaki-san works, two or three times a week.

That’s because not every problem can be solved by software tinkering alone as DMS evolve.

Exactly. Since we entered the DMS market in 2018, sensing technologies have evolved considerably. As a result, it reached the level where, as well as biological information, heart rates and blood pressures can be monitored. However, if we aim to go a step further, it is imperative that software is more closely connected to hardware and structures, such as the structure of cameras and design of filters. In order to achieve our goal of “delivering better products to customers,” I believe that communication across divisions will be increasingly important.

Additionally, our software design, hardware design, and mechanism design teams are all involved in development as they demonstrate their expertise. The strength of a system as a whole also leads to the quality of our DMS. In this project, I am in charge of the design of the entire software systems for DMS, including sensing technologies developed by Murachi-san’s team. Sensing technologies are used for detecting and determining the driver’s drowsiness and distraction from images captured by a camera. When these signals are received by an electronic control unit (ECU), a system alerts the driver. I am involved in designing those systems for DMS to conduct those tasks.

Yes. We frequently make sure that our understanding is aligned between the software team and the manufacturing team. While we have constraints, such as development costs and takt time, we need to find a compromise between the ideal on the software development side and the reality on the production site. That’s a difficult point. In most cases, we usually make adjustments to software because it is more difficult to make alterations to hardware.

I feel bad about making unreasonable demands of the software division all the time. I would be grateful if you could understand that all those demands are suggestions for better products in a better way (laughs).

As Murachi-san said earlier, my department is responsible for hardware design and coordination, while working with the DMS sensing division. In that role, I am involved in the entire process from considering the system configuration in the early stage of development to mass production. Working with the procurement division, I select components and develop cost-reduction measures. My responsibilities extend over diverse areas, including working with the manufacturing engineering division to improve yield by optimizing inspection standards. When the project enters the business negotiation stage, I work with the sales to negotiate costs. Communication with a wide range of people may be one of the defining features of this role.

DMS cameras are located where they are easily visible to the driver, so we often receive requests from customers to make the DMS cameras as small and discreet as possible. This is Taguchi-san, who examines the manufacturability and potential manufacturing issues associated with making the DMS smaller.

It is technically possible, but if we try to simply reduce the size of a housing, there could be more than a slight problem arising. It is also my responsibility to report those issues back to the design team during the prototyping phase. I am also working mainly on improvement of productivity and quality on production lines. You may think it is a job for the quality assurance division, but my role is more closely connected to the production floor. When any defect occurs, I will find out the extent to which it could affect the production line. In those cases, my tasks also include checking with the design or manufacturing engineering divisions about matters that cannot be determined on the production floor, as well as sharing information with the quality assurance division. In short, I am in charge of acting as a bridge between the shop floor of manufacturing and the quality assurance division.

I am a sales representative working at a branch, so I am not very familiar with the production floor. What kinds of things can lead to defects on the production floor?

Some defects are equipment-related, while others occur at the individual component level. Manufacturing processes could cause defects. Our mission includes minimizing the impact of defects and developing systems to prevent them from occurring in the first place.

I feel that our awareness of the quality of the entire project has grown thanks to Taguchi-san.

As a person in charge of quality improvement, I consider it part of my role to raise the awareness of everyone involved in the DMS project. So, I am very pleased to hear that.

Taguchi-san said that he reports the issues in the prototyping phase back to the design team. It is our responsibility as the manufacturing engineering division to stabilize the manufacturing infrastructure from prototyping through the transition to mass production. The manufacturing engineering function covers three processes: namely, mounting, assembly, and inspection. I oversee the inspection equipment. My responsibilities are the design, development, and setup and launch of inspection equipment for DMS. To achieve the reliable and efficient inspection of products, I am seeking the best inspection methods and equipment specifications daily, while working with the design division.

For the company to increase profits, what we, the manufacturing engineering division, can do is to improve production efficiency, as well as to keep equipment costs down. In either case, we cannot achieve it without the cooperation of the design, manufacturing, and quality assurance divisions. In particular, Kagawa-san joined the company in the same year as me, and we have been working together on DMS projects for some while. This makes it easy for us to frankly speak without sugarcoating, which I believe is having a positive impact on this project.

Ueda-san and Oiwa-san propose DMS, which was created through collaboration between the research and development and manufacturing teams, to customers and work to promote the wider spread of DMS.

Yes. My responsibility is to promote DMS sales to customers other than automakers. More specifically, my customers include insurance companies, dash-cam related businesses, car leasing companies, and car rental agencies. As Yamasaki-san talked about requests from automaker customers earlier, there are still no specific needs for DMS in the industries that I am in charge of. Therefore, my activities center around proposal-driven sales to create demand through our proposals.

Yes. Some customers already have an understanding of the purpose and benefits of introducing DMS, while others are not familiar with DMS at all. There are also customers who know about DMS but have not yet been able to envision the benefits of introducing it or how it could be used. As I listen to the voices and needs of these diverse customers, I often consult Murachi-san, for example, about features that could be incorporated into DMS and the trade-off between functionality and cost.

Expansion to non-automaker customers is a new business strategy for DMS, which means our entry into new areas/industries where we have no experience. What can DMS achieve, and what benefits can DMS provide for diverse customers? Ueda-san always asks for ideas that answer these questions. By addressing these questions, we are motivated in development.

Oiwa-san, as you are in charge of sales to automakers, what do you keep in mind when dealing with customers?

As you all know, sales activities for automakers center around working out specifications with customers, managing deliveries, preparing estimates, and obtaining orders for new deals. While conducting these tasks, I make a point of not saying “no” to a customer’s request on the spot. Even for atypical requests that are difficult to fulfill, I try first to consult the team members here in charge of development, design and manufacturing engineering. Many of the consultations concern cost. The specifications of DMS can be altered according to what features each customer requires. I think that flexibility in terms of costs is another unique advantage of Mitsubishi Electric Mobility.

We in the development team are also continuously working on cost reduction, for example, by sharing common features to reduce development hours and by accelerating algorithms. In addition, I believe that aligning the features with customer requirements, as Oiwa-san mentioned, is also an important factor in enhancing our price competitiveness. Instead of giving up when a customer says that a product is too expensive, we work to find a practical balance between the ideal and what is feasible—for example, by explaining, “At this level of functionality, we can achieve it at this price.” We also make these adjustments with the customer’s perspective in mind.