Along with roads and railways, tunnels play a major role in social infrastructure because they enable vehicles to pass through mountainous areas in short time periods. At mountain tunnel construction sites, tunnel drill jumbos are used to drill holes into which explosives are inserted for blasting.
Accordingly, they are important machines that greatly affect the safety and efficiency of workers, as well as the cost and time of tunnel construction. The Rock Drill Machinery segment's tunnel drill jumbos have an 80% share of the domestic market. They are used in tunnel construction work for the new Hokkaido Shinkansen lines, the Linear Chuo Shinkansen Line, and other projects, as well as in ongoing construction of freeways.
In recent years, mountain tunnel construction contractors have found it difficult to attract workers due to the occurrence of accidents caused by falling rocks and the like, as well as the retirement of skilled workers. In response, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has been promoting "i-Construction," which means deploying ICT to help make construction sites unmanned. Accordingly, major general contractors have been accelerating their ICT efforts, including by setting up dedicated i-Construction divisions. To address these needs, we began developing a fully automated drill jumbo in 2016.

Hydraulic crawler drills are one of the main products of the Rock Drill Machinery segment. They are self-propelled rock drills that bore downwards (to open holes in the bedrock). In Japan, they are used in the mining of crushed stone and limestone, which are used as raw materials for concrete. Overseas, they are used in various mines and also in infrastructure development, such as for land leveling.
Ever since our company developed Japan's first rock drill in 1914, we have continued to take on the challenge of development and manufacturing as a rock drill manufacturer. The overseas market environment is currently deteriorating and we continue to see difficult business performance. However, in order to lay the foundation for future growth, we are working to further enhance our one-of-a-kind technologies by leveraging the experience and know-how we have accumulated, and we are working to expand our market share and to expand and strengthen our flow business and stock business by utilizing IoT technologies.

The hydraulic drifter is the core equipment of a hydraulic crawler drill and enables speedy and powerful drilling work. It crushes the hard rock with 80 to 200 revolutions and 2,000 to 5,000 blows per minute, to suit the rock quality.
In order to achieve optimum and stable drilling, the requirements for a hydraulic drifter are for the high speed and accurate control of the striking and rotation, and also for durability under high pressure and high temperature. Our company has identified the characteristics of the around 100 components of a hydraulic drifter and we have established our own design theory based on our many years of experience and know-how. In addition, we conduct the heat treatment to increase the hardness of the components ourselves, without outsourcing, and our machining is finished with an accuracy of 1/1,000 mm. In this way, we are able to manufacture high quality and high performance hydraulic drifters by conducting all the production in-house from the design to the machining, heat treatment, and assembly processes.
This is the strength of our company, and it has enabled us to achieve category leadership and uniqueness that new manufacturers cannot imitate.

Hydraulic crawler drills are much more difficult to operate than hydraulic excavators, because it is not possible to visually confirm the state of the drilling inside the hole, so the efficiency of the work greatly depends on the skill and experience of the operator. To address this issue, from fiscal 2019 we have started to include an "operation management device" that utilizes IoT technology as standard on the machinery we have shipped within Japan.
This operation management device is not limited to simply grasping information such as the hours of work and engine speed that is conducted in the construction equipment industry, but is also used to grasp the complicated operation conditions peculiar to hydraulic crawler drills, such as the number of perforations, the length of perforations, and the striking time. By monitoring and analyzing the information obtained, we intend to prevent problems before they occur and reduce machine downtime, as well as to improve the operator drilling work and operational efficiency. We are currently working to create a unique system as a rock drill manufacturer.
We will go on to install the operation management devices on the machinery shipped overseas, in order to strengthen life cycle support, which is an issue overseas, and to strive to expand our earnings in the future in both flow business and stock business.