The DX Acceleration Department is promoting the business and operational transformation undertaken by each division, and a total of 696 DX projects are in progress across the company (as of March 2023). We will invest an additional approximately 53 billion yen in DX projects over the three years from the current fiscal year to the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, to realize a leaner management structure and transform the value we provide to our customers.

In addition, we are working to accelerate this transformation by (1) developing a foundation to promote data utilization throughout the company and (2) by developing human resources with the skills and experience necessary for business and operational transformation using digital technologies.

We are in a position to handle a variety of data in our transactions with customers and in the operation of business entities. As such, we have built infrastructure for accumulating, integrating, and analyzing data as a group-shared function to utilize such data for business as a company asset. This will optimize business by reducing the work costs required for data utilization and by making the operation and business processes of each department and business entity predictable through simulators. Furthermore, by linking data across our corporate group horizontally, we will achieve more advanced value creation.

We have defined the human resources required for DX by role and established a program to develop them. We provide exercise-based workshops for digital transformation managers, business transformation leaders, and operation transformation leaders that enable them to discover and organize business and operational issues, set transformation goals, and practice transformation based on basic knowledge of digital technologies. We also provide training for digital specialists according to their level for them to acquire data utilization techniques that can support the activities of business and operation transformation leaders.

Many manufacturing sites have traditionally used human intuition and know-how to determine and operate manufacturing conditions. However, Iochem Corporation, an iodine manufacturer in the United States, used machine learning to analyze more than 10,000 manufacturing conditions and found the combination of conditions with the highest yield. In doing this, they improved on-site facilities and operations and successfully reduced manufacturing costs.

Going forward, we will continue to promote DX at manufacturing sites exemplifying the successful case at Iochem and deploy them horizontally via our data utilization platform.

In the face of the recent global pandemic of infectious disease, heightened geopolitical risks, and social demands for decarbonization, companies are looking to rethink their supply chains. We developed the online platform "Streams" to transform the value we provide to our customers. We accomplished this by leveraging digital technologies to add new perspectives, such as CO2 emissions reduction benefits and sourcing suggestions, to the integrated commercial and logistics supply chain construction expertise we have cultivated through our organically growing business.

We will provide solutions tailored to customer needs, centrally manage data, and revitalize communication with customers through the widespread use of this platform, thereby helping reinforce supply chains.