Ujigami | Managed IT Manufacturing Company of the Year 2024

Ujigami



Transforming Manufacturing with Smart Factory Solutions

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Edward Dickson, Ujigami | Manufacturing Tech Insights | Managed IT Manufacturing Company of the YearEdward Dickson, President and CEO
Smart factories have a history dating back years, but their accessibility was limited to larger companies with substantial investment capabilities. However, significant changes have occurred over the past decade, rendering smart factory capabilities available to a broader range of manufacturers. This shift in the marketplace has been substantial over the past decade and continues to gain momentum.

At the forefront of this transformative shift is Ujigami, developed by Tutelar Technologies. Ujigami offers a comprehensive solution, covering a broad spectrum of manufacturing needs, from product-directed manufacturing and advanced mistake-proofing to dock-to-dock management and control. One of its notable features is AI empowered IIoT, which actively controls the quality of each serialized unit throughout the complete production process, ensuring that products are defect-free before shipping.

Ujigami is designed with flexibility, scalability, and user-friendliness in mind, allowing its core module to be easily customized to meet clients’ requirements. It can also integrate additional functionalities, like scheduling, customer-order interfaces, warehouse management, performance metrics, advanced management reporting, and supplier-advanced shipping notifications. It seamlessly integrates with existing manufacturing software systems, serving as the central hub for coordination and reporting while streamlining operations.

“The advantages of Ujigami software extend beyond the factory floor. Clients can optimize their operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and deliver products with precision and speed by harnessing its smart manufacturing capabilities,” says Edward Dickson, president and CEO at Ujigami.

Thanks to technological advancements like AI vision, Ujigami can implement intelligent manufacturing systems that significantly reduce or completely eradicate the reliance on human labor.

This includes a shift from supervisory roles overseeing various work cells to deploying robotics and automation. Notably, plant floor manufacturing systems like Ujigami are instrumental in removing human operators from the manufacturing process.

Ujigami’s expertise is exemplified by a recent success story involving a client operating 20 injection molding machines with capacities ranging from 1000 to 2000 tons. During the COVID-19 pandemic, finding low-skilled machine operators became increasingly challenging. They turned to Tutelar for assistance in developing operator-free injection molding machine work cells.

Ujigami plays a pivotal role within these cells by directly interfacing with the material delivery system to ensure that the correct resins and colorants reach the injection molding machines. It also oversees an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system responsible for delivering the appropriate containers to the injection molding workstations and removing full containers. Automation, predominantly through robots, handles tasks like part extraction from the molding machines, gate removal, and packing into containers as they emerge from the machine.


The advantages of Ujigami extend beyond the factory floor. Clients can optimize their operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and deliver products with precision and speed by harnessing its smart manufacturing capabilities

Ujigami is the brain and central nervous system of the entire system, supervising and controlling the robots, molding machines, and containerization, ensuring that the produced parts meet stringent specifications. It guides the robot on where to place each part depending on the type of container delivered. The system operates seamlessly without human operators, effectively eliminating a previously crucial role in the injection molding work cell.

This transformation has enabled the work cell to operate continuously, 24/7, with minimal interruptions, except for essential tool changeovers. In the past, the reliance on human operators led to breaks and disruptions due to natural needs like bathroom and lunch breaks. Ujigami is leading the charge in reducing reliance on human labor and ensuring uninterrupted production through innovations like AI vision and intelligent automation. As we look to the future, it’s clear that smart factories are no longer a privilege of the few but a vital tool for a more efficient, precise, and responsive manufacturing world.

Deep Dive

Manufacturing Intelligence Solutions: Turning Data Into Factory-Wide Coordination

Manufacturing leaders have spent years investing in connected equipment, industrial sensors and automation technologies. Yet many facilities still struggle to translate those investments into consistent plant-wide performance. Data often remains trapped within individual machines, production cells or software applications, creating islands of visibility rather than a coordinated manufacturing environment. The challenge is no longer collecting information. It is turning that information into timely decisions that support quality, throughput and responsiveness without adding complexity for operators. Manufacturing intelligence solutions have emerged as a response to this gap. Their value lies in their ability to connect production assets, interpret real-time conditions and coordinate actions across the factory. Buyers evaluating these platforms should look beyond dashboards and reporting functions. The strongest solutions act as a decision layer between equipment, people and production objectives, ensuring that information leads directly to action. A meaningful solution should be able to work across a mix of modern and legacy equipment. Many manufacturers operate facilities that contain assets from different generations, making wholesale replacement impractical. Intelligence platforms that can integrate diverse devices, collect information from multiple sources and create a common process framework provide a faster path to value. This capability becomes increasingly important as more sensors, monitoring technologies and connected devices enter the manufacturing environment. Another consideration is the ability to maintain process control while supporting product quality requirements. Manufacturing conditions change continuously, and not every production step can be verified automatically. Effective platforms help enforce validation activities, inspection requirements and process checks while maintaining traceability. This creates greater confidence that deviations are identified quickly and contained before they affect downstream production or customer deliveries. Ease of adoption also separates successful implementations from disappointing ones. Many digital manufacturing initiatives fail because they demand extensive programming expertise or place additional burdens on plant personnel. Systems that simplify configuration, automate technical tasks and guide users through process creation allow manufacturers to focus on improvement rather than software management. The objective should be to reduce the effort required to manage production while increasing the quality of decisions being made throughout the facility. When these capabilities come together, the impact extends beyond technology. Manufacturers often experience lower inventory accumulation, improved production flow and greater confidence in daily execution. Teams spend less time reacting to uncertainty and more time addressing measurable issues. This shift also improves how managers allocate labor, respond to constraints and protect delivery schedules when demand changes. The result is a factory environment that operates with greater predictability, visibility and coordination. Among providers in this space, Ujigami stands out as a compelling choice for manufacturers pursuing factory-wide intelligence. Its approach centers on serving as the logic layer that connects equipment, sensors and production processes into a coordinated system. The platform enables manufacturers to create smart manufacturing workflows without extensive programming while maintaining real-time visibility into production activity. It supports process enforcement, quality validation and integration across diverse equipment environments. Its ability to direct manufacturing actions, coordinate automated systems and simplify adoption aligns closely with the qualities that distinguish leading manufacturing intelligence solutions. For organizations seeking greater control, improved quality assurance and more efficient production execution, Ujigami represents a strong recommendation. ...Read more
Managed IT Manufacturing Company of the Year – 2024

Company
Ujigami

Management
Edward Dickson, President and CEO

Description
Ujigami is an eponymous solution for ongoing digitization and control of the plant floor with AI-enabled devices and technologies. It is established as a leader in leveraging AI, reducing the reliance on people to ensure the factory works efficiently. Ujigami delivers intelligent manufacturing, identifying and eliminating waste from the manufacturing floor. It also offers insightful reports and dashboards to supervisors and managers for improved workflows.