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NEC launches "Management and Business Optimization Consulting Service" for Manufacturing and Distribution Industries
- Using AI, quantum computing and mathematical optimization technologies to provide end-to-end services, including verification of business optimization -Tokyo, September 13, 2023 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) has launched a “Management and Business Optimization Consulting Service," which visualizes a company's strengths and weaknesses in the supply chain and formulates optimal measures and implementation plans from management, business process and IT perspectives, for customers in the manufacturing and distribution industries.
Amid the diversification of consumer needs and priorities, companies are increasingly using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to optimize their management and business processes.
However, since advanced expertise is required to actually apply these cutting-edge technologies, it is most effective to collaborate with experts who are familiar with the technologies, in addition to strategic consultants from the concept formulation stage.
In this service, NEC's experienced digital transformation (DX) strategy consultants and experts in AI, quantum computing, mathematical optimization technology, and other areas form a team to provide end-to-end support from visualization of management and business issues to strategy concept formulation, implementation and establishment.
Management and Business Optimization Consulting Service Overview
- (1)Supply Chain Management (SCM) Assessment
- Based on the analysis of SCM maturity levels (*) and strengths that lead to profit generation using SCM diagnostic items (**), NEC visualizes management and operational issues in a customer's supply chain and proposes directions for solving them.
- Through interviews with clients, the service identifies the current SCM maturity levels for sales, supply and demand, production management, and other areas, sets targets, and proposes priority areas for reform.
- These enable clients to select and concentrate their investments among a wide range of business areas.
- (2)Concept development support
- Based on the results of the SCM assessment, the service considers solutions that include the use of cutting-edge technologies from the perspectives of management, business processes and IT, and formulates an implementation plan.
- NEC's optimization engineers and data scientists with extensive experience in production planning optimization and delivery planning optimization participate in the formulation of the plan and consider the prospects for improvement.
- This enables the development of highly effective IT policies and their seamless implementation through collaboration with existing quantum computing services, thereby accelerating reform.
In conjunction with the launch of this service, quantum computing-related services offered as IT measures for management and business optimization have also been enhanced.
Quantum Computing Related Service Enhancement Overview
- (1)NEC Vector Annealing Service Enhancements
- Problem-solving performance is approximately 9 times faster than conventional services. (***)
- Provides auto-tuning functionality to improve reusability of pre-built models.
- Support for constraint precedence and higher-order terms enables handling of inequality constraints and expressions with third-order terms or higher. (****)
- (2)Quantum Computing Education Service Enhancement
- New "Practical 2" course offered to clarify the difference between existing mathematical optimization technology and quantum annealing technology and to impart the skills to use them appropriately.
Going forward, through the provision of this service, NEC will promote the use of quantum computing technology as part of contributing to the resolution of a wide range of social issues.
***
Notes:
- (*)SCM diagnostic items: NEC's original diagnostic items for evaluating the maturity of customers' supply chain-related operations and analyzing issues from the perspective of strengthening profitability. The diagnostic items are characterized by focusing on business strategy and management in addition to "operations" and "infrastructure" analysis.
- (**)SCM Maturity Level: Based on the SCM diagnostic model, the state of organizational responsiveness and organizational capability in a company is determined numerically and scored.
- (***)NEC research; compared with the Time To Solution (TTS) of a traveling salesman problem visiting 100 cities.
- (****)Enhanced to be able to model as-is inequality constraints such as knapsack problems and complex problems that consider the interaction of three or more entities, which have been difficult in the past.
About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.
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