Sumitomo Metals Receives Highest-Ranked “Best Partner Award” from Panasonic

Today, the Sumitomo Metals Group received from Panasonic Corporation (head office: Kadoma City, Osaka) the Best Partner Award, the highest of its kind, at the Panasonic Excellent Partners Meeting. The Group also received the Gold Award and the Bronze Award for ECO-VC (Value Creation) Initiatives on the same occasion. At the award ceremony, Hiroshi Tomono, President of Sumitomo Metals, made a presentation on behalf of all award-receiving companies.

The ECO-VC awards are given to suppliers of Panasonic Group companies that make particularly significant contributions to reducing CO₂ emissions and making their products more competitive. There were 901 such contributions from suppliers this year. Sumitomo Metals has been given an award for three consecutive years and received the highest-ranking Best Partner Award for the first time this year.

1. Award Themes
(1) "Best Partner Award” received by Sumitomo Metals
Enhancement of product competitiveness by actively proposing new manufacturing methods and new materials

(2) “ECO-VC Gold Award” received by Sumitomo Metals
For revolutionizing the inner structure of LCD TVs by use of an entirely new press manufacturing method

(3) “ECO-VC Bronze Award” received by Sumitomo Metals (Naoetsu), Ltd.
For clad materials for the inner cooking bowl of the IH rice cooker, that reduced weight reduction and saved resources by making sheet metal thinner with reduced diameter

2. Evaluation Points
(1) Best Partner Award
We were highly evaluated for our activities to proposing new manufacturing methods and new materials for many products and contributing to enhancing product competitiveness through our long-term relationship with Panasonic. Examples of this include significant reduction in the number of parts for LCD TV sets, development of an ultra-thin heat-release steel sheet, and thinner light-weight H-beams for housing construction.

(2) Gold Award
We drastically reduced costs of materials for LCD TV’s internal construction and reduced CO₂ emissions by more than 50%. By using our long experience of applying proprietary CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) simulation technology, we have established the Ultra Deep Drawing method*1 in a short period. This has enabled to reduce the number of inner frame parts, which are core components that support LCD panels. In addition, we have used painted galvanized steel sheet, instead of plastic sheet, for the back cover of the latest LED TVs and have succeeded in integrating the inner frame and the back cover. This has led to reduction in costs and development of a product made with much lower consumption of energy. Moreover, we have newly developed a coating with superior resistance to scratch and abrasion on the surface. This coating is resistant to scratches and wrinkles and makes accurate measurement and appearance possible.

*1 Ultra Deep Drawing
Deep drawing is the manufacturing process of forming a significant dent in the sheet metal. Deep drawing usually causes fractures or scratches. Sumitomo Metals has succeeded in mass production of the extreme deep drawing of 13.3 mm in inside height of the draw on a sheet of 0.6 mm in thickness, by using the Computer Aided Engineering of its unique supercomputer. This new method is called “Ultra Deep Drawing.”

(3) Bronze Award
We have worked on stabilizing bonding of thin, wide coils of clad materials*2, indispensable for the inner bowl of the IH (induction heating) rice cooker, and have developed mass production technology that enables to fully utilize production capacity by measures such as optimization of bonding pressure distribution based on the numerical analysis. As a result, we succeeded in reducing the thickness from 2.0 mm to 1.45 mm and in reducing its diameter, to achieve material weight reduction of 30% on average. This has also led to 36% reduction in CO₂ emissions that are related to manufacturing of inner bowl materials.

*2 To clad is to bond together dissimilar metals.

3. Future development
Sumitomo Metals will extend the frontier of what steel can do. At the same time, we will continue not merely to develop and provide materials but also to provide solutions to our customers by using our advanced technologies in areas such as combining different materials. We will seek recognition as being "Number One in Customer Evaluation."

4．Award accomplishments

	FY2009	FY2010	FY2011
Best Partner Award			●
Gold Award		●　●	●
Silver Award	●
Bronze Award			●

 

Dr. Hiroshi Tomono (President of Sumitomo Metals) receives

highest-ranked "best partner award" from Panasonic (right)

 

Best Partner Award		Gold Award from Panasonic for its ECO-VC Initiative