TEPCO Power Grid, Inc: How NEC Realizes Fundamental Operational Transformation [2:58]

How NEC Realizes Fundamental Operational Transformation
#Strategic_Consulting
TEPCO Power Grid, Incorporated

[Mission and Business] TEPCO Power Grid, Inc. Hideaki Miyamoto
Our mission is to ensure the safe, reliable, and continuous delivery of electricity, essential to daily life and industry.
To sustain a stable power supply, we perform about 2 million power distribution construction work annually.

[Challenges]
Many power distribution facilities were built during the post-war period of rapid economic growth and are now aging.
We need to plan for more extensive maintenance and revamps than ever before.
However, we face challenges such as workforce shortages and high reliance on individual expertise.
In addition, our current business system is inefficient because it was based on manual processes that preserved a paper-based culture.
We believe that true operational transformation requires a fundamental overhaul.

[Phase 1: Strategy Planning]
To fundamentally review our operations, we debated what the ideal state should be like.
We focused on identifying tasks that truly require human skills, and questioned whether such tasks were even necessary.
While mapping out the gaps between the present against the ideal, we discussed how advanced technologies could be leveraged to address this. After 6 months of sessions, we created a roadmap for operational transformation.

[NEC's Strengths]
NEC proposed not just a simple systematization of existing operations, but a fundamental transformation of operations.
They brought a format that energized discussions, along with extensive knowledge of advanced technologies and insights from other industries, which broadened our perspectives during the discussions.

[NEC's Strategic Consulting] NEC Shuzo Ushioku
Instead of just proposing simple solutions or theoretical concepts, we focused on identifying the true management challenges and providing consistent support until the resolution with our technology. We are also progressing technical validations based on the technology utilization ideas discussed.

[Phase 2: Technology Validation] TEPCO Power Grid, Inc. Masahiro Takahashi
We are currently inspecting sites to create blueprints and monitor construction progress.
Using image recognition technology, we are testing the automatic identification of utility poles from dashcam images of company vehicles.
This allows us to manage the latest distribution equipment and surrounding conditions from a management screen.
In the future, we believe this will reduce the need for on-site inspections by expanding remote decision-making.

[Phase 3: Next Steps]
We are also challenging ourselves to transform operations to enable more advanced facility management using AI and smartphone images.
Our goal is to transform manual tasks into technology-driven processes that require no human intervention. To achieve this, we are steadily progressing through steps while conducting validations with NEC experts.

Is this task truly necessary?
By constantly asking this question, we aim to transform all operations to be data-driven, and to become a company that is even more indispensable to our customers and society.

CI:
Orchestrating a brighter world
NEC