The main plant of Hitachi Engineering and Services (HES) has produced pipe spools for large scale plants. These pipe spools have complicated shapes and are made by various types of materials. In the process of these pipe spools fabrication, high accuracy and high throughput are required. Especially the bending process, assembling process, and the welding process are required skilled workers who have many experiences and know-how because of the particularity of these fabrication processes and have difficulties to be automated. (pipe spool: assembled pipe shipped as one unit)

In recent years, the facilities of power-generating plants and chemical plants are becoming larger. The pipe spools for these plants are also becoming larger and the shapes are becoming complicated. It becomes increasingly difficult at each production process of pipe spools to perform the accurate dimensional inspection and precise scribing even by the skilled worker. But these works within the short time period are strongly required from the view point of quality control and productivity.

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