Yamagata – Japanese automotive seat cover manufacturer Daiyu has overhauled its cutting operations with Shima Seiki’s latest P-CAM series, aiming to stabilise quality, increase throughput and improve worker safety across plants in Japan and Thailand.
Founded in 1979 in Yamagata Prefecture, the company supplies finely sewn seat covers to both domestic and global automotive customers and is now extending the same production standards into medical seating applications.
With highly precise cutting and finely crafted sewing techniques, the company supports not only the domestic Japanese market but also the global automotive industry. In an industry that demands strict safety standards, Daiyu’s manufacturing is supported by P-CAM R’s highly precise and highly efficient cutting, which is designed to enhance productivity while meeting rigorous quality requirements, ensuring superior safety and durability.
Daiyu says that its previous generation of automatic cutting machines had become increasingly difficult to maintain, with ageing components causing unplanned downtime and variability in cut quality. According to the company, sourcing replacement parts during breakdowns had become a persistent bottleneck, leading to delays in downstream sewing and assembly operations and putting pressure on on-time delivery to OEMs. The limitations of the legacy equipment made it necessary to reassess the cutting platform and introduce a system that could support higher precision and consistent performance over the long term.
Mr. Takayama, team manager of the Business Management Group, explained: “While comparing multiple manufacturers, we conducted trial cuts at Shima Seiki headquarters in Wakayama Prefecture and confirmed highly precise results even with difficult-to-cut materials such as urethane.
“This was a major factor in our decision to adopt the system. We comprehensively evaluated productivity, cutting quality, running costs, after-sales support, and reliability as a Japanese manufacturer, and installed P-CAM machines in both our domestic and overseas factories.”
In July 2022, P-CAM183S was installed at the Yamagata factory, followed by the flagship model P-CAM R in December 2024. In July of 2025, another P-CAM183S was installed at Daiyu’s Thailand factory.
Precision
Car seat manufacturing requires high cutting precision and high productivity, as well as frequent drilling processes. P-CAM R has enabled cutting of material stacked up to 90mm, and simultaneous operation of cutting and drilling, resulting in an increase in productivity of approximately 20%.
Furthermore, optimisation of nesting to arrange parts with minimum waste and high-precision cutting technology has improved yield rates, reducing running cost by about 20%.
Regarding safety, the automatic entry-prevention cover boasts especially high marks, as it not only complies with increasingly stringent global safety standards but also contributes to workers’ peace of mind and enhances overall factory safety awareness, as well as serving to balance safety and operability.
Additionally, various features such as uniform cutting through belt-type knife sharpening and precise origin alignment via camera monitoring contribute to maintaining stable quality.
Some car seats are designed with built-in airbags, and feature thread that breaks only when the airbag deploys, making precise cutting and drilling all the more important.
Therefore, ensuring quality is essential not only in the cutting and sewing processes but from the design stage as well.
At Daiyu, new PGM CAD software on Shima Seiki’s SDS-ONE APEX4 is used to achieve accurate and waste-free pattern design that accommodates complex three-dimensional structures.
“By securing the accuracy of design data and performing high-precision cutting with P-CAM R, we consistently meet strict safety standards and support quality that protects lives,” added Mr. Maruyama, production group manager in charge of quality assurance.
In addition to automotive seat covers, Daiyu also manufactures covers for dialysis chairs which feature a large reclining structure with a complex three-dimensional shape that integrates the seat and backrest.
Here, high cutting precision and sewing technology are essential, along with durability and daily maintenance considerations suitable for medical use.
Leveraging the precision control and quality standards cultivated in the automotive field, Daiyu says it achieves highly reliable manufacturing in the medical sector as well.
In the automotive industry, where high safety standards are required, Daiyu has also established a production system that simultaneously achieves precision, productivity, cost, and safety. P-CAM R supports manufacturing as a core piece of equipment within this system.
The company name “Daiyu” originates from a combination of Japanese characters that mean “big friendship” embodying the spirit of valuing strong connections. This spirit is passed on through trusted relationships with business partners, engagement with the local community, and the creation of products that protect lives. The unwavering commitment to pursue quality is the driving force that strengthens these “connections.”
As automotive seat and medical chair designs become more complex, incorporating integrated airbags, electronics and ergonomic shaping, demand is likely to grow for cutting and patterning solutions that can manage multilayer structures and tight tolerances without sacrificing throughput.
By aligning its cutting rooms with newer digital and mechanical technologies, Daiyu is positioning itself for future developments in both the automotive and healthcare seating sectors, where sustainability, safety compliance and cost efficiency will remain central purchasing criteria.
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