Yokogawa Electric Corporation

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (hereafter referred to as "Yokogawa") was founded in 1915, and its mainstay businesses are the control (industrial automation, IA) business, the testing and measurement business, and the aviation and other business. Yokogawa states in its corporate philosophy that its goal is to contribute to society through broad-ranging activities in the areas of measurement, control, and information. While addressing the establishment of the infrastructure necessary for global business operations, Yokogawa has been spurring on its transformation to a solutions/service company to provide high-value-added products and solutions to the clients.
In fiscal year 2015, Yokogawa drew up a mid-term business plan, "Transformation 2017 (TF2017)," for the period ending fiscal year 2017, in order to accomplish business reforms aimed at boosting investment for growth and improving profitability.
At Yokogawa, the control business accounts for approximately 90% of total sales. For this core business, the company launched the Yokogawa Global System (YGS) project in 2006. "While the ratio of our overseas sales continues to increase, we realize that we cannot make quick business decisions unless we unify our rules, processes, and systems on a global level. Therefore, under the banner of 'One Global YOKOGAWA,' we initiated the YGS project in order to quickly unify processes, visualize data, and standardize our systems on a global basis, so we can ultimately improve management efficiency," says Mr. Taku Kitahara, General Manager of the Management Information System Department at Yokogawa's Management Information System Headquarters .
The YGS consists of three systems, and it serves as the backbone system for all the company's businesses. The first system handles the information of almost all core business operations and activities including order taking, production, distribution, accounting, and personnel affairs. It is configured with SAP ERP modules and based on the Global Single Instance. The second system is a tailor-made decision-making system. It is used in designing products according to customers' specification requirements, calculating costs, and preparing quotations. The third system is a production-related system that operates to assist the manufacturing subsidiaries.

Yokogawa acknowledges that the project will span over a long period of time. In 2006, before the YGS project was launched, Yokogawa sought a partner company for the project. For the selection, the company set the criteria: the partner company must have a broad range of knowledge and expertise and it will spare no effort until Yokogawa achieves the goal. Furthermore, because global support was vital for the worldwide deployment of the YGS, the partner company had to have business bases around the world and a global network. ABeam Consulting fitted the bill exactly.
"While working together on the project, I felt that the consultants from ABeam Consulting were well-versed in the knowledge of SAP modules, efficient in carrying out the project, and skillful in communicating. ABeam Consulting changed project consultants in rotation at an interval of a few years. Since all consultants had diverse and different experiences, we were able to gain different perspectives," says Mr. Tomoya Suyama, Leader of the Business System Group in the Management Information System Department at Yokogawa's Management Information System Headquarters.
Yokogawa's project members stated that ABeam Consulting's global network and the continuous support provided by its overseas members through the network steadily moved the project forward. Yokogawa also highly evaluates ABeam staff's excellent project executing abilities and their teamwork.
"The project required ABeam's consultants to learn about YOKOGAWA’s Corporate Culture and its way of running business. The consultants from ABeam Consulting understood them in a very short time. Therefore, the consultants were able to perform immediately after participating in the project. I believe their competence is backed by the strength of the teamwork and the in-house collaboration. We often asked them to perform difficult tasks, and they always produced greater results than we expected, not to mention that they always met the deadlines and budgets." (Mr. Kitahara)

The YGS project was first started in the United States, and then expanded to the group companies in Japan. Meanwhile, the project faced many obstacles, including the global economic recession triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the project had to be suspended at one time. Nonetheless, the YGS covered 50% of Yokogawa's control business as of April 2015, after ten years from the launch of the project. The next objective of the management was to accelerate the deployment of the YGS and produce results, and then to proceed to the next stage. To that end, Yokogawa set a target of increasing the YGS coverage rate to 90% by May 2017.
"To achieve our objective, we drew up a plan to simultaneously complete the deployment of the system in 39 companies in the five regions – 17 companies in Europe, 16 companies in the Middle East and Africa, one company in Russia, one company in Korea, and four companies in Southeast Asia (three companies in Malaysia and one company in the Philippines) – by May 2017. Since the project had to take place in the five distant and different regions, at least five teams were needed. It was very difficult to organize and deploy the teams," describes Mr. Hiroyuki Kuroda, Leader of the Business Process Group in the Management Information System Department at Yokogawa's Management Information System Headquarters.
Yokogawa assigned a dedicated team to Europe. For Malaysia and the Philippines, members in the regional headquarters for Asia located in Singapore provided support. In the Middle East and Korea, one team completed the tasks by working alternatingly. In Russia, ABeam Consulting provided major support to many project tasks including the duty to lead the project.
"Initially, we planned to organize the teams only with our employees, but no matter how we looked at it, we lacked the necessary resources. So, we received full-scale support from ABeam Consulting, and planned the project schedule. Our head office member, Suyama, stayed in Europe during the project, and I travelled back and forth to the Middle East and Korea together with a consultant from ABeam Consulting." (Mr. Kuroda)
The most difficult part of deploying the system in all those regions was to ensure "unification." Cultures are different in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Russia, Korea, and Southeast Asia, as are the business systems. Under such circumstances, unifying business processes was a major challenge. In most past cases, each business base worked on its own to optimize processes in order to improve business efficiency. Taking the same approach for a global project would result in inefficiency. So, considerable time and effort were spent in convincing local members in order to push the YGS project forward. "We had difficulties in obtaining informed consent from the employees of our overseas companies. For example, when we presented templates, we were bombarded with requests such as the addition of more functions. We discussed patiently and persistently in order to forge forward." (Mr. Suyama)