Tokyo, September 9, 2022 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) and NEC Fielding, Ltd., a leading provider of maintenance services for ICT equipment, will introduce a delivery planning system for maintenance parts utilizing quantum computing technology from October this year in the 23 wards of Tokyo.

This system reduces the work of planning next-day delivery of maintenance parts, which takes approximately two hours a day, to roughly 12 minutes, a 90% reduction that makes an important contribution to operational efficiency.

NEC Fielding provides maintenance services in which its customer engineers (CE) visit customer sites for repair work in the event of a breakdown in ICT equipment and non-ICT equipment manufactured by NEC or other companies. There are several hundred maintenance operations each day in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and parts are delivered from parts centers in accordance with the dispatch plans prepared based on CE's skills and arrival times, taking into account traffic conditions. However, in addition to various orders, such as emergency responses, periodic maintenance, and requests for specific times, there is an enormous combination of delivery variables, such as delivery areas, part types and sizes, truck and motorcycle use. Consequently, it takes a great deal of time to create a delivery plan, and there is a limited number of people who can formulate these plans efficiently.

Accordingly, NEC and NEC Fielding conducted tests from February of this year utilizing the NEC Vector Annealing Service, which provides ultra-high-speed processing of large-scale combination problems with quantum computing technologies.

As a result of the testing, it was confirmed that the delivery plans created using quantum computing technology were equivalent to those of skilled workers. The companies now plan a full-scale introduction of the system to approximately 50 next-day delivery plans for NEC Fielding as part of improving the efficiency of planning operations and reducing dependence on specialist skills.

Moreover, in addition to reducing the time needed for formulating delivery plans by roughly 90%, the system is also expected to lower delivery costs by approximately 30% (*) by reducing the number of delivery vehicles and shortening travel distances by expanding the scope of work and target areas to which it is applied.

In the future, in addition to reducing the burden on workers involved in the formulation of delivery plans for maintenance components, the two companies aim to reduce costs and CO2 by improving delivery efficiency.

In response to increasingly complex social issues, NEC is working to develop a variety of use cases, such as optimizing production plans and improving the accuracy of machine learning in the financial domain, as attention becomes more focused on quantum computing, which is expected to enable high-speed solutions to problems that could not be solved in the past. Beginning with this initiative, NEC will promote the use of quantitative computing by companies and universities as part of helping to solve social issues.

***

Note:

About NEC’s Quantum Computing Initiatives

https://www.nec.com/en/global/quantum-computing/index.html

About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.