Vendor profile
HISTORY WITH COKE
A Sanden Shanghai production line.
Sanden remains steadfast in its view that CO2 is the optimal refrigerant for most marketing and point-ofsales equipment. And no company has helped support Sanden’s business model more than Coca-Cola, which aims to be HFC-free by the end of 2015. At the ATMOsphere America 2015 conference, held in Atlanta in June, Coke’s global program director Antoine Azar said the company had reached an “inflection point” in the company’s HFC-free system adoption, asserting that CO2 is the refrigerant that best fits Coke’s portfolio of equipment. As of the first fiscal quarter 2015 Coca-Cola had installed 1.48 million HFC-free units, a large portion of which would not have been possible without Sanden. To make this happen, Sanden had to overcome some early supply chain and productivity obstacles. “When we started out, we had a supply agreement with CocaCola, but we had a delay for a number of reasons,” Yajima said. “One is that we had some component supply issues, and also the productivity did not increase as we had expected.” The two problems were related, he explained. “It was our first production here in Shanghai and we needed to find effective solutions for our operation but were basically starting from scratch. Without proper component supplies, it goes without saying that we cannot keep our production lines running.” CO2 compressors made by Sanden Shanghai
Those teething issues are now just a distant memory to Yajima, who has been in his role, with Lin Zhiping as his deputy general manager, for the past two years. Zhiping has overseen the project from the very beginning. Now the facility can deliver a CO2 compressor for a customer’s showcase and vending machine in one-and-a-half months due to the updates to the supply chain. “Our customers have different time frames for their businesses, and we strive to cater to their specific demands,” Yajima said. “When we talk about quality, it includes not only the quality of the products itself, but also our ability to deliver the products to our customers when they need them by shortening the lead time.” Sanden’s new automatic quality control system takes a lot of the heartache out of the company’s quality control processes. “We have automatic sensors in place that detect, for example, when components are picked up,” Yajima noted. “These sensors also prevent any possible human errors from going into the production process.” Yajima understands the critical role the company is playing in commercializing CO2 technology on the largest scale possible and the example it is setting for others to follow. “We are continuously striving to lead the industry with our CO2 technology,” he said JR
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Accelerate America October 2015