The efficiency is an indicator of the ability to perform a given task within a specified time. To achieve high efficiency, the following three issues must be considered:

1.Improvement of production capacity per hour (reduction of production cycle time)
2.Improvement of machine utilization rate within a prescribed period
3.Waste elimination

To guarantee the product quality, the production method adopted should produce little variance in precision (it must have so called 'process capability') so that the quality can be assured without an inspection. The following section uses laser machining as an example to describe how to reflect the requirement 1 in designing high efficiency equipment.

(1)Equipment design with improved production capacity per hour (reduced production cycle time)

・Workpiece processing generally consists of a) processing to add values to products (main tasks) and b) non-processing work (incidental tasks). This section describes how to make the main tasks a) more efficient.

・To add several straight lines to a workpiece using the laser beam, there are two ways. You can use a single laser beam to irradiate multiple areas by moving the workpiece (Fig. 1a), or you can also shorten the processing time by splitting a laser beam into several beams to irradiate multiple areas at once (Fig. 1b).

・To use multi-shot processing shown in b), it is necessary to adopt a technology that can equally distribute several laser beam components from a single source.

・The laser beam will be split into horizontal and vertical polarization components using optical parts, such as a polarization beam splitter and a quarter wavelength plate. (Fig.2)