Establishment of new headquarters to strengthen DX promotion functions

The azbil Group’s new medium-term management plan, covering the three years from fiscal 2025 to 2027, announced in May 2025, outlines a policy of continuing to strengthen its management foundation by strengthening human capital and product competitiveness, as well as steadily investing in the promotion of digital transformation (DX^*1), in order to strengthen the “azbil Group’s unique business model.”

In advance of this policy, Azbil Corporation established a new “Digital Enhancement Headquarters” on April 1, 2025. The headquarters has established a system to accelerate digital utilization efforts by consolidating the core functions for promoting DX, with the Digital Design Department, Information Systems Department, and Cyber Security Office under its umbrella.

Until now, Azbil’s Information Systems Department has been responsible for planning, developing, operating, and maintaining the information systems that support the company’s business processes. Additionally, the Cyber Security Office has been fulfilling its role in improving security levels and supporting business continuity in order to ensure the safety of the company’s products, services, and internal information systems.

In October 2024, with the aim of strengthening the DX promotion system and accelerating business transformation, the Digital Design Department was established as an organization to promote “proactive DX.” The department has been working to promote DX that directly leads to business growth, including promoting the use of an in-house AI chat service.

These three departments each had different objectives and responsibilities, and sometimes differences in policy made it difficult to quickly resolve issues. For example, the measures of the Digital Design Department, which is responsible for proactive DX, sometimes conflicted with the cautious stance of the Cyber Security Office due to security concerns, and it sometimes took time to reconcile the two sides.

To solve these issues, the Digital Enhancement Headquarters has consolidated the three departments under its umbrella and established a collaborative system to improve efficiency and accelerate the promotion of DX from all directions. In fact, the “IT Consultation” desk, where employees can make inquiries and submit applications when considering IT measures within the company, is now able to respond more quickly than ever before under the comprehensive management of the headquarters, and in some cases the speed of responses to inquiries has increased threefold. In addition, the company has been promoting its internal AI chat service, which began to be used in August 2023, to all departments within the company, and as a result, 90% of employees within the company now use the service.

The Digital Enhancement Headquarters, established against the backdrop mentioned above, has the role of supporting the expansion of product appeal and human capital from the perspective of DX promotion, in order to realize the business model unique to the azbil Group outlined in the new medium-term management plan. The azbil Group’s DX efforts are based on the following three pillars.

The first is “Creating products and services through product and sales DX.” Product DX is one of the driving forces behind the azbil Group’s long-term goals toward 2030, and will contribute to the “new automation” area set as a goal of the SDGs, providing technological support for the development and deployment of products and services. In addition, sales DX aims to provide services that are attractive to customers through the use of digital marketing and customer management systems, as well as through reforms to remote services and engineering operations.

The second is “Transforming business processes through Fit to Standard^*2.” We will apply a package that implements business processes that are considered global best practices to the workplace, aiming to streamline and optimize business operations across the entire azbil Group and improve productivity. This enables us to respond flexibly and quickly to changes in the business environment, such as various legal and tax reforms.

The third is “Strengthening our business foundation through DX.” By developing and strengthening generative AI and data utilization infrastructure, we are creating a foundational environment that promotes the active use of technologies and knowledge cultivated in the field and contributes to the continuous improvement of security measures. For example, information obtained from veteran engineers working on-site is digitized and integrated with existing educational and technical materials to create a database for technology transfer. By linking this with generative AI, we have put in place a system that allows young employees on the front lines to acquire know-how via chatbots and use it in their work. Furthermore, as part of strengthening our business foundation through DX, we are also providing the AI service “Seisei KY” (generative hazard prediction), which supports on-site service staff in their risk assessment work.

As we implement this series of measures, we also view the development of DX talent to strengthen our human capital as an important mission of the Digital Enhancement Headquarters. As part of this human resource development effort, Azbil conducted a DX literacy assessment of 538 of its employees in February and March 2024. As a result, while 32% of employees had high digital skills, exceeding the general average, only 20% had a strong mindset for transformation. Based on these results, we are working on human resource development that focuses not only on improving digital skills but also on fostering a mindset for transformation. In terms of skills, we are developing educational programs in cooperation with the Azbil Academy, our in-house human resources development organization. We are also working to spread awareness through proactive promotional activities by management to promote digitalization.

Strengthening business foundations through DX is not limited to internal transformation; it is an important initiative that also contributes to solving social issues such as environmental impact and labor shortages. By advancing DX in close collaboration with external parties, including customers and partner companies, the azbil Group hopes to create a virtuous cycle of mutual influence, leading to the creation of even greater value.