Factory Tour No.3 (3/3)

4. Soto Co., Ltd.
In the morning on the second day, we visited Soto Co., Ltd. of Ichinomiya City in Aichi Prefecture, which is a large fabric dyeing and finishing business founded in 1923.
Because the spinning with oil and dirt attached to woven textiles cannot be used for fashion fabric without dyeing and finishing, it is important to to remove/wash out dirt, dye, fix the appearance of the textile, raise the nap of cloth, and finish clothes to meets the customer's image or demand.
At the beginning of the plant tour, they gave us important information on "company policy", "quality control", and "facilities". We recognized that the company produces products that only they could produce using a "fusion of sensitivity and the technology of human being".
We looked at various processes of dyeing and finishing. It was evident that they had high technology systems all over the plant. (Fusion of technique such as chemical processing, flow system of administration, and so on). Furthermore, we were touched by the posture to continue challenging technique of the employee who handled a complicated apparatus through all process through to final output.

5. Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology
After visiting Soto Co., Ltd., as the summary of this tour, we went to Textile Machinery Pavilion of Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology to review what we learned, through this tour, observing history of textile, process of cotton to thread, and the machines, which produced cloth from the thread. There was such a lot of history covered by a lot of machines there.
Through this tour, we learned how fiber became cloth, and how engineers processed the cloth to make various products. Fabric is used for not only clothing, but so many products in our house or car. In this training, although we've observed just only a few of the many process to become products from raw materials, we were impressed by their technique and facilities. In addition, their attitude toward original manufacturing that we observed in the 4 companies we visited, had a deep impact on us. Through this training, we finally found the reason why Japanese-based manufacturing with reliable techniques provides us with high quality merchandise even with intense international competition.