Company K is an automotive parts manufacturer. Mr. F, manager of the General Affairs Department of Company K, said, "We have a global supply chain now, and if a natural disaster damages a manufacturing plant of a critical component and stops the supply of the component, the operation of the plant that is not damaged will be suspended.
When a natural disaster damages a manufacturing plant for critical parts, the supply of parts is stopped and the operation of the plant that was not damaged is also stopped, which causes secondary damage.
In particular, automobiles are made up of tens of thousands of parts, most of which are supplied by parts manufacturers. In the unlikely event that a plant of a parts manufacturer such as ours is hit by a disaster and stops operations, the automobile plant that produces the finished product will be severely affected. We can expect to be unable to produce automobiles for several days.
Given this situation, there was an urgent need for measures that would allow production to resume as soon as possible in the event of a natural disaster.
Even if there is no problem with the factory equipment," said Mr. Kikuchi, "if there is a prolonged power outage or power usage restrictions, the factory will not be able to operate. To achieve a quick recovery, we thought that securing power was more important than anything else.
Therefore, we first considered installing emergency generators. However, since we have several factories in various locations, it was not practical to install emergency generators in all of them. The cost of installing emergency generators would be enormous, and the location of the generators and their regular maintenance would be essential, making cost and resources an issue. (Mr. F)
BCP measures proved difficult, and Mr. F continued to gather information.
Mr. F, who continued to gather information, consulted SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. he had previously done business with in another department and who he trusted.
The SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. representative listened to Mr. F's requirements in detail and later proposed the SANUPS M53A 1-box type mobile power supply vehicle.
We proposed the introduction of a one-box type mobile power supply vehicle so that we could start by restoring operational support and management functions. With this, we can dispatch a mobile power supply vehicle to the affected plant and supply power as an emergency generator. Even if road conditions are restricted during a disaster, a 1BOX type vehicle can be moved relatively easily and can enter narrow spaces, making it highly mobile. Another important point was that the vehicle was a 1BOX type with automatic transmission. Since a standard driver's license was all that was required to drive the vehicle, we thought it would be easy to secure personnel to dispatch to the affected factories.
If we no longer needed to install generators at each plant, we could reduce the costs and resources required for installation and maintenance, so we were able to positively consider the introduction of the system." (Mr. F)
"My image of a mobile power supply vehicle was that it was large, like a truck or trailer type, with a large amount of power generation. I had heard that the power it supplied could not be used as is, but that a converter was required. However, the mobile power supply vehicle proposed to us, SANUPS M53A 1BOX type, can take not only 200V, but also the same single-phase 100V as an average household, so it was very attractive because it can directly supply power to devices such as PCs, smartphones and mobile phones. Furthermore, because the generated power is supplied through a power connector, there is no need to worry about electric shock, and I felt that safety considerations had been thoroughly considered." (Mr. F)
Soon after, Company K decided to introduce SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. 's mobile power supply vehicle, SANUPS M53A 1BOX type. The fact that the system has already been adopted by power companies, communication companies, and broadcasting stations also helped make the decision.
"In the event of a disaster, in order to prevent the chain of command from being paralyzed, we first used a mobile power supply truck to restore power to headquarters and put in place a system to ensure a rapid recovery. There are still many things we do not know about BCP measures, but we intend to listen to SANYO DENKI CO., LTD. 's opinions and make our measures even more solid." (Mr. F)
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