Yanmar Construction Equipment Simultaneously Deploys Manufacturing AI Data Platform CADDi Across Multiple Departments

Caddi Inc. (Headquarters: Taito-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Yushiro Kato; hereinafter referred to as "Caddi") announces the results of its utilization of the manufacturing AI data platform CADDi (hereinafter referred to as "CADDi") at Yanmar Construction Equipment Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Chikugo-shi, Fukuoka; President: Ryu Kudo; hereinafter referred to as "Yanmar Construction Equipment"). Starting in fiscal year 2025, Yanmar Construction Equipment is fully utilizing CADDi across five departments: Development, Procurement, Cost Planning, Quality Assurance, and Quality Control. In just one year since its introduction, concrete results such as reduced workload and advancement of quality-related operations have begun to emerge.

Challenges and Background

Yanmar Construction Equipment, as a group company of Yanmar Holdings Co., Ltd., is a global company leading the compact construction machinery sector. It supports sites worldwide by offering a wide range of products, including mini excavators, and providing integrated services from development, manufacturing, and sales to after-sales service.

Previously, the company's design, procurement, and quality control systems were fragmented, leading to significant man-hours to access necessary information. This resulted in cases where new drawings were created without being able to find similar existing ones, increasing direct and indirect costs. Furthermore, know-how for utilizing data such as drawings was concentrated among a few veteran employees, and it took time to horizontally deploy information about similar parts when defects occurred, posing challenges for data utilization across the entire organization.

Results and Effects of Utilization

Through the utilization of CADDi, results are beginning to emerge in each department.

In particular, the following three departments are showing significant positive feedback:

Procurement Department: By narrowing down potential suppliers using AI-powered similar drawing searches, the selection time per part has been reduced from 5-10 minutes to 2-3 minutes (up to a 70% reduction). This allows less experienced staff to achieve the same accuracy in candidate selection as experienced employees.

Quality Assurance Department: A management system has been established that links thousands of supplier investigation reports with drawings. This enables rapid information dissemination to other departments when defects occur and immediate reference to investigation reports for parts after design changes.

Development Department: Multiple use cases, such as identifying drawing notations and searching for parts with similar shapes, have become established, improving efficiency by one hour per person per week. Nearly all license holders have requested continued use, and penetration into the workplace is steadily progressing.

In just one year since implementation, each of the five departments has begun to find its own unique ways of utilizing CADDi, and data utilization across the organization is expanding from isolated points to a broader scope. Beyond numerical efficiency gains, access to data, which was previously person-specific, is becoming a shared organizational asset, and the scope of utilization continues to expand.

Future Outlook

Yanmar Construction Equipment aims not only to establish utilization within individual departments but also to achieve integrated utilization involving departments such as design, cost planning, and quality control. They will continue to promote the advancement of operations through inter-departmental information linkage, such as reducing design man-hours and quality risks by reusing drawings across models and suppressing new drawing creation, and building a recurrence prevention flow by linking defect records to drawings.

Furthermore, by setting a target login rate of 20%, they aim to foster a habit of "searching" and raise awareness for "easy-to-use data management." They also plan to expand its use to support the early development of employees with less work experience, thereby enhancing the data utilization capabilities of the entire organization.

Comment from Kai Ishibashi, Cost Planning Group, Accounting and Finance Department, Yanmar Construction Equipment Co., Ltd.

Kai Ishibashi

"Initially, we had already digitized our drawings, but we lacked effective means to search for similar drawings, which led us to plan the introduction of CADDi. However, during this process, the ability to link other information and acquire text data via AI-OCR significantly enhanced searchability and data collection beyond our expectations. As a result, not only has operational efficiency improved, but we can now easily conduct searches and compile information in ways that were previously not possible. I believe this has contributed to the level of adoption achieved in about a year and the current results in each department. We will continue to promote its use for improving operational efficiency, work quality, information management awareness, and for educational support."

About the Manufacturing AI Data Platform CADDi (https://caddi.com/)

The "Manufacturing AI Data Platform CADDi" is a product that analyzes and links data across the engineering and supply chains of the manufacturing industry, extracting insights to enhance production activities and decision-making. It transforms scattered experience and data into assets through the power of manufacturing expertise, AI, and technology, thereby increasing competitiveness.

Caddi Inc.

Caddi Inc. is a global startup with the mission to "Unleash the Potential of the Monozukuri Industry." It provides the "Manufacturing AI Data Platform CADDi," which serves as the foundation for management decision-making and execution by assetizing scattered data and experience. Through applications such as "CADDi Drawer" and "CADDi Quote," it changes judgment and execution, creating impacts at the management level. The company operates in four countries, including Japan, the United States, Vietnam, and Thailand, driving global transformation in the manufacturing industry. Its cumulative funding is 25.73 billion yen. The parts procurement support business has been integrated into the AI platform business, and the provision of parts and assembled products has now ended.