Revolutionizing plant design. Working as one team.

Narue

It was around the time when Chiyoda Corporation was doing a PoC with many different AI ventures focusing on the “automation of piping design.” I met Mr. Kamobayashi for the first time on May 15, 2018.

Kamobayashi

Wow, you remember so well. *laughs*

Narue

Of course I do because what you told me, when I met him for the first time and consulted him about automation, left a very strong impression—that it’s not time for AI yet, and that we should develop a specialized CAD software first. I also received technical answers from the Arent engineers, and they really matched the concept we had, and that made me decide to do development with Arent.

Kamobayashi

Since it was a highly construction-centric project, I took with me an engineer with solid background in CAD and had him talk. His name is Ōkita. He had studied every inch of plant construction, so as we were speaking with Mr. Narue, we already had a clear vision of where we should be headed.

Narue

In about two hours, even I was convinced that we could do it. From there, all I had to do was to think about how I should get our ideas across to my company. It was right when there was an AI boom, and the people in my company were thinking that AI was a must and were skeptical if developing a CAD software from scratch was really possible. So, with the technological capabilities of Arent, I tenaciously cleared up their doubts one by one.

Kamobayashi

We were able to convince everyone because we first submitted a PoC, demonstrating that we could develop it in two or three months, then increased the scale gradually. That is one of our strengths, you know? But to have your proposals approved by your supervisors, I think that the important thing is to concretely prove to them the quality and the scale of the things you can do.

Narue

Truly from a small start, we kept bringing results as we progressed.

Kamobayashi

We explained our ideas to you, and you gave presentations to his supervisors, then they gave us approval for more budget. That’s how we kept expanding the project. I think that is the proper and successful way for carrying out agile development projects or for starting small.

Kamobayashi

That’s because our AI would lack accuracy due to the lack of big data for building a foundation. Of course we might incorporate AI in the future, but at that stage, we thought that we should implement it normally because we had confirmed clear logic through which we could turn the information that plant engineers had into mathematical formulas by organizing it without relying on AI.

Narue

We were looking for a company capable of developing an automatic routing product at that time, but we were not getting any good answers from AI ventures. Arent was the only one who presented us with the answer.

Kamobayashi

On the surface, it seems like you can solve issues with AI, and that makes you start your project thinking that you need AI. In this project, as a basic premise, you must learn about plants in order to lead the project to successful implementation. Despite that, everyone was avoiding that extra work. The world of industrial plants is really deep, you know?

Narue

The biggest difference was that AI ventures were holding so many interviews with us. This shows that Arent was truly committed to learning about plants. Ordinary engineers would numerically process the data they receive, then deliver that as a “product.” Arent, on the other hand, can reach deeper so to speak. They tried to understand the subject and identify the issues inside out first. Their attitude in trying to understand and solve issues was completely different.

Kamobayashi

From the beginning, I was telling them that I would not work like ordinary consultants do. I was asking them to give us two or three months to develop a prototype.

Narue

At that time, the budget had been formulated based on the premise that we would be using AI, so I had a pretty hard time convincing the people in our company, but You were always telling me, “You need to create a product to get any results.” Even if you are a consultant, it would be nothing unless you have some kind of an output. The technical capabilities of Arent really showed.

Kamobayashi

Yes, I did. We had so much discussion in the company. After explaining Mr. Narue’s vision to my members, we were able to form a clear picture on how we were going to identify and solve the issues. Since we knew exactly what to do, all we had to do was to execute correctly. In this project, it is hard to see the path with only a consultant’s perspective, and an engineer’s perspective is also essential. When you see it from an engineer’s perspective, you can clearly see that you can solve the issues by combining systems and math. Having a clear vision on both the issues and means is a massive advantage for a consultant who has experience as a systems engineer.

Kamobayashi

We knew it was going to be a big project, so we worked on recruiting people. The biggest challenge was team building. I also asked other members to bring talented engineers they knew. Although we had several engineers who excelled at CAD, we needed an endless number of them. As we were doing so, talented engineers gradually began showing interest in us before we asked them, and now we have about 50 of them. After all, your members’ capabilities and passion determine the limit of what you can create, so I believe that it is really important to boldly expand your team for product development.

Narue

As a business owner, weren’t you worried about increasing a fixed cost? *laughs*

Kamobayashi

Thankfully, Chiyoda Corporation took care of that well and approved a budget. *laughs* I could really tell that Mr. Narue was serious about the project because he was saying, “I will get it approved no matter what, if you bring me a good product every month.” So, I decided to keep stepping on the gas harder.

Narue

I just had no other choice but to keep insisting that we could do it. *laughs” Of course the people in my company would say things like, “what’s up with your concept?” when there was any defect, but I knew we were able to easily overcome the obstacles.

Kamobayashi

I frequently use the word “team,” and in my view, the “team” includes not only Mr. Narue and us, but also his supervisors who have the authority to give approval. You need to get everyone involved. The higher you go up the ladder in the organization, the more complicated the politics and the tactics become, so you need to break through obstacles by getting all relevant people involved as your team members.

Narue

Yes. We set rough milestones after presenting the company with our big goal. Setting them too much in detail would not work well with agile development, you know? The first thing, and actually the hardest thing, we had to develop was the function called “block pattern.” We came up with the project flow in such a way that we would be able to proceed without any problems once we got the block pattern development over with.

Kamobayashi

At that point, the product outline clearly looked world-class to us. It was truly challenging. The more talented the engineers are, the more they tend to aspire to do such things.

Narue

I told that to everyone and asked them to follow the dream together.

Kamobayashi

The relationship between Mr. Narue and us was not just “a client who sets requirements” and “a company which implements them” either. As people sailing on the same boat, we pursued our ideals together without any compromise.

Narue

In a sense, their requests became more enthusiastic than mine. *laughs* They wanted to automate more, for example. You don’t get that kind of feedback unless the product is good, so I thought that showing the actual product was important. And it was about eight months into the project when the company approved an additional budget of several hundred million yen seeing how the product was turning out, and it also began considering its commercialization.

Kamobayashi

Usually, nobody will show interest at first when you present them with your proposal. They will give you criticism only after you show them the product. The product we had at that time was nowhere near usable in actual work situations, so we were of course anticipating criticism like, “This is not acceptable,” or “You can’t use that in actual work situations.” The more important thing here is to make them voice their opinions—to see if you are successfully getting relevant people involved. You need to have a product to get feedback whether it is positive or negative.

Narue

How many in-house evaluation sessions did we have? Four? Well, I had you participate in it almost every time, and the number of the audience increased every time. It started out as a development report session with about 15 or 16 people, but it increased to 30, and it eventually went up to 100. Everyone from the top executives to design staff was there, and what happened was that they started to have more things that they wanted to say, and that enabled us to receive comments from many different perspectives.

Kamobayashi

Since the product was well-made, we wanted them to see it and we wanted their criticism. I mean, positive comments are great, but we are also grateful for criticism.

Narue

On a side note, the thing that Chiyoda Corporation appreciated the most about Arent was that the explanations given by Arent’s engineers were so technical and detailed that they almost made us think that they were real plant engineers. People in our company could really see that everyone from Arent had studied the topic that much, and it was obvious that Arent had an unwavering determination. So, I think that the engineers were able to talk the same language on many points.

Kamobayashi

From Arent’s perspective, it was because we thought it would be such a shame if this product development were discontinued without going all the way to the end. Normally, system development involves making improvements repeatedly over the long term, and that will lead to competitive advantages, then eventually to the establishment of an unrivaled de facto standard. However, if you keep using it only in your company without selling it to the outside, the company will deem the system performance “good enough” at some point. It will reach its “completion” without any solid criteria, the development efforts will slow down, and it will eventually be overtaken by other systems with better capabilities. We thought that outside sales were crucial in maintaining the “strength” of the product. However, “selling” requires an enormous amount of energy separately from the one required for “development,” so we needed to take risks. If that was what we had to do, we thought that Arent should take the same risks too by forming a joint venture. That way, it would be easier for us to keep working on the development without slowing down, and we could share the joy with Mr. Narue and all the people involved on an equal footing when we succeed. These were some of the reasons behind our proposal.

Narue

At Chiyoda Corporation, we have so many collaboration options such as a joint venture or revenue sharing through a business alliance, but the one I chose was, just as you mentioned, to “fight as one team” through a joint venture. Arent were selling game apps and software programs as well, so I thought, “Why not leverage that knowledge?” Plus, it was a fusion between Arent’s CAD technology and our plant technology, so I thought we should go 50-50, and that was the overall conclusion that the company reached. Although I personally had outside sales in mind from the beginning, it was not included in the scope of the company’s plan. That’s no surprise though. It’s like I am saying that I want to systematize our own strengths and sell it to our competitors. To change the opposing opinion into approval, we presented them with the product as I mentioned earlier and eventually succeeded in commercializing it. I truly believe that it all depended on the product.

Kamobayashi

When you have a product as a core to start off with, more people will follow you as the quality of the product improves, and you will eventually be able to convince those with the opposing opinion. Everyone will gradually notice that it is actually realistic and feasible and that it brings value.

Narue

And that was actually how it went. Speaking of noticing value, what I think is the most game-changing in this project is the fact that new value was found in plant engineers. Generation of profits by designing with their hands—that was traditionally what they were for. However, the launch of software like this has given shape to the value of engineering in a different form. We have built a new path for monetizing their special expertise. I believe that this game-changing event truly is what we call “the redefinition of the value of engineering,” which is upheld as one of the key goals of Chiyoda Corporation’s revitalization plan.

Kamobayashi

I think that Japan, in general, must do the monetization of skills and knowledge better. There are still so many things that can only be realized with Japan’s technology, but Japan has really been unsuccessful in monetizing the one and only value. That is such a shame, you know?

Narue

That is true. This kind of situation is probably everywhere throughout Japan. The expertise of highly experienced engineers is remaining unutilized as “dead storage” without either being shared with others nor being monetized efficiently. On top of that, it is not passed down to younger generations properly either.

Kamobayashi

We are wasting so much, but that means Japan has space for growth there when we look at it differently. I believe that it is still possible for many industries in Japan to bounce back if we properly transform the expertise into explicit knowledge and develop systems.

Kamobayashi

That’s right, and when we do it, we do it to the fullest extent. We would like to dynamically transform everything in plant construction, from how organizations should be to how to build them.

Narue

I believe that this product can absolutely innovate the conventional workflow. We will implement it in Chiyoda Corporation first, then we will offer it to the numerous companies in the plant industry. Our big goal is to revolutionize the workflow employed in the plant industry throughout the world.

Kamobayashi

Plants are a facility where the things that exist in this world are converted into different forms with higher value, converting naphtha into gasoline, for example. We would like to bring changes to the plant industry and to eventually change the flow of production throughout the world, and one of the reasons we came up with the company name, PlantStream, was to reflect the aspiration. I think this project is essentially about trying to change the flow of energy and the flow of things—in other words, the things flowing at the bottom that support society from underneath. You’ve got to dream big, you know?