Yamaichi Special Steel Renews All Mission-Critical Systems with Nutanix

Remove vendor lock-in with in-house IT operations including infrastructure to database management

Yamaichi Special Steel Co., Ltd. is in the business of distributing special steel products to the automotive industry, consisting of two types: tool steel, which is used as a material for dies, and production materials, which are processed into parts.The company partnered with Nutanix to modernise their legacy data center as they aim and move towards building a DX factory. Nutanix has brought multifold benefits of enabling flexibility, speeded up development work as well as improved productivity to the organisation.

Challenge

Yamaichi Special Steel has built a “Factory Mall” that stocks an abundance of tool steel and other materials. It carries out everything from parts manufacturing to delivery in one integrated process and responds quickly to the needs of production materials with a unique inventory management system which identifies the location of steel materials.

“The production volume of tool steels and production materials is dependent on the production volume of automobiles. Although the impacts of COVID-19 and semiconductor shortage have gradually eased since the second half of 2021. We have excess inventory due to the arrangement of parts and materials in preparation for recovery production, therefore inventory management is more important than before,” said, Hideo Kobayashi, Director of Administration Div.

The company used to host almost all of its mission-critical systems at its data center, but over time, it became wasteful and costly. “The various systems that we had been implementing in the hopes of improving ROI had become locked in by the vendor, and we were unable to back them up,” said Shigetoshi Sakamoto, Chief Manager of IT Strategy Sec., Reform and Transformation Office.

Solution

Yamaichi Special Steel decided to change this situation by adopting the Nutanix Cloud Platform, which enables the self-management of all system operations. The company has built all mission-critical systems for sales, invoicing, shipping, receiving, inventory management, etc. on Nutanix. They are using PostgreSQL and Nutanix Database Service (NDB) for business analysis data such as sales and profit margins.

The system also detects access to all network devices with MAC addresses, including PCs, mobile phones, and machine tools, and stores the data in PostgreSQL to enhance security. In addition, an electronic workflow system has been implemented and is now running on Nutanix to speed up decision-making and reduce paper usage.

“Through the Technical Account Management (TAM) service, we receive up-to date information, diagnostic information for our environment, and advice on specification changes from a user’s perspective,” said Sakamoto.

Customer Outcome

The Nutanix Cloud Platform has reduced operating costs, saved time, and provided the advantage allowing us to make decisions on the fly quickly without relying on a vendor. “Whenever someone requests a VM for evaluation or a database for testing, we can use Nutanix’s workflow system to apply for, approve, and build a new environment in no time. It’s been great for us to be able to do it whenever we want,” said Sakamoto, who also appreciates the streamlining of the process. “With Nutanix Cloud Platform running in our in-house deployment, we can focus on managing our internal network instead of being distracted by carrier maintenance of our fiber-optic lines,” Sakamoto added.

Naohiro Ueoka, IT Strategy Sec. Manager, Reform Promotion Office, said, “the information on the support pages is accurate and sufficient, and has helped us in many ways. The manuals are a prime example of how easy it is to find information. I found it easy to use, as soon as I typed in a keyword, search suggestions appeared. The manuals themselves are also very easy to read.”

“Thanks to the ease of use of the GUI, we can easily deal with various operations, starting with daily operation checks, detecting errors in weekend coverage, checking NDB, etc. It was my first time using Nutanix, but their engineers helped by giving me detailed instructions. I also attended seminars which helped me understand the system and manage the operations easily,” said Fuka Yamashita, IT Strategy Sec., Reform and Transformation Office.

Next steps

The automotive industry is currently on the brink of massive change such that it has been referred to as a "once-in-a-century transformation," and various technological revolutions are accelerating, such as the shift to EVs. Yamaichi Special Steel has also invested in manufacturing facilities for drive motor core molds for electric vehicles, and is aiming for factory DX, which will enable flexible and highly efficient production.