The collaboration aims to move decision-making from personal experience to data-driven systems, with a goal of achieving billions of yen in benefits across the group.
In a move aimed at significant operational and efficiency improvements, Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. and NS Solutions Corporation (NSSOL) have announced a strategic collaboration focused on revolutionizing Mitsui Chemicals’ supply chain through digital transformation. The partnership leverages NSSOL's expertise in advanced mathematical optimization and business design, combining it with Mitsui Chemicals’ deep knowledge of its manufacturing and logistics operations. The two companies anticipate that this initiative will lead to benefits worth several billion yen across the entire Mitsui Chemicals Group.
The collaboration comes as Mitsui Chemicals seeks to overcome challenges associated with traditional, experience-based decision-making in its supply chain. Historically, responding to production capacity issues and demand fluctuations relied heavily on individual know-how, which could impact the speed and accuracy of planning. The new system is designed to replace this with a faster, more precise, and data-driven approach, utilizing sophisticated algorithms to support critical decisions in production and inventory management.
A proof of concept (PoC) has already been successfully conducted at several of Mitsui Chemicals' domestic manufacturing sites, demonstrating promising results. The PoC showed that a single site could see business improvements worth hundreds of millions of yen annually, providing a strong basis for expanding the initiative to other locations. This pilot project focused on optimizing the production and inventory of resin products, which are central to Mitsui Chemicals' operations.
The core of the collaboration is the development of a system that supports "advanced decision-making," a process that uses AI and data analysis to identify optimal options from complex factors. This system builds upon a production planning optimization program already developed in-house by Mitsui Chemicals. The integration of NSSOL's algorithms will allow for more sophisticated functions, such as multi-product adjustments that account for raw material constraints, optimized production scheduling, and efficient inventory allocation.
For example, the partnership is currently working to improve production scheduling by automating decisions on monthly production volumes to prevent surpluses or shortages based on supply and demand. It also seeks to optimize production sequences to minimize waste and reduce the workload involved in changeovers. With the promising results from the PoC, Mitsui Chemicals is now moving toward implementing these technologies for live operations.
