Integrating on-site knowledge across five overseas sites with multilingual AI.
Reduced headquarters inquiries by 76%
GLOBAL OPERATIONS
Overseas manufacturing sites and HQ technical department
Industry
Electronic components
Implementation target
Overseas manufacturing sites and HQ technical department
Implementation period
6-week PoC → 5-month multilingual rollout
BACKGROUND
Improving the efficiency of global site operations
At Company H’s overseas sites, many pieces of equipment did not have manuals in the local language, so local staff frequently contacted headquarters in Japanese.
The headquarters technical team was burdened by time-zone support, and late-night overtime had become routine.
As the overseas sales ratio continued to grow and more efficient global site operations became a key item in the mid-term management plan, CLAVI Mining’s multilingual support helped build a system where each overseas site could access the same knowledge in its local language.
KEY RESULTS
Headquarters inquiries
76% reduction
Overseas site troubleshooting time
73% shorter
Improvement work time
50 hrs/mo
Local staff satisfaction
82%
BEFORE
Challenges before implementation
ISSUE 01
Inquiries from overseas sites averaged 440 per month. Many were topics that headquarters had already answered before, but language barriers and poor searchability caused inquiries to repeatedly concentrate on the headquarters technical department. Local staff felt that they ultimately had to ask Japan to feel confident, creating a vicious cycle of dependency on headquarters.
ISSUE 02
Translated manuals could not be prepared due to budget and workload constraints, leaving local staff to interpret Japanese manuals using Google Translate and guesswork. Over the past two years, 12 near-miss incidents caused by mistranslation occurred, and the issue continued to be raised in management meetings as a safety management risk.
ISSUE 03
Veteran engineers at headquarters were exhausted by inquiries across time zones and could not spend enough time on their core improvement work. The turnover rate in the headquarters technical department exceeded the industry average, making improvement urgent from the perspective of organizational sustainability.
WHY CLAVI
Reasons for selection
01
REASON 01
Although multilingual support is also offered by other products, Company H prioritized translation accuracy and answers that matched the context of each site. CLAVI Mining was highly evaluated because it generates multilingual answers based on original knowledge and is designed to reduce on-site confusion caused by mistranslation.
02
REASON 02
In addition, patented hallucination-suppression technology was a prerequisite for overseas expansion as a structural countermeasure against misinformation risks that could occur in local languages. During the PoC, pilot operation was conducted for two weeks each at the China and Thailand sites, and positive feedback from local staff saying that work became smoother exceeded 88%, which became the decisive basis for full-scale deployment.
03
REASON 03
Furthermore, support for data protection regulations in each country, such as China’s Data Security Law and GDPR, was available as standard, which also significantly minimized additional verification costs for the legal department.
IMPACT OVERVIEW
Effects after implementation
IMPACT 01
[Headquarters inquiries] 440/month → 105/month, a 76% reduction. Late-night and early-morning support by the headquarters technical department was almost eliminated.
IMPACT 02
[Overseas site troubleshooting time] Average 80 minutes → 22 minutes, a 73% reduction. The reduction in production downtime was estimated to be worth about 85 million yen annually.
IMPACT 03
[Improvement work time for headquarters technical staff] 50 hours created per person per month. This time was reallocated to productivity improvement activities for new products, and the number of improvement proposals from the technical department increased 1.9x year over year.
IMPACT 04
[Local staff satisfaction] Survey responses saying that work proceeds smoothly improved from 34% to 82%. Turnover at overseas sites also showed signs of improvement, and the initiative was evaluated positively from the perspective of global talent strategy.
EXTRA IMPACT 05
In addition, the headquarters HR department observed a unique secondary effect: an increase in applicants interested in overseas assignments. Analysis suggests that the ability to work overseas with the same information foundation as headquarters lowered the barrier to overseas assignments, making this a case where AI adoption extended into global talent strategy.
EXECUTIVE COMMENT
Comment from the Head of Overseas Business: “Achieving the same knowledge and the same quality in global expansion had been a long-standing challenge. With CLAVI, we saw a structural solution for the first time. Next, we plan to horizontally deploy the same platform when expanding into emerging markets such as India and Eastern Europe.”
INSIGHTS
Insights from this case and future development
INSIGHT 01
The greatest implication of Company H’s case is that integrating knowledge across overseas sites can trigger structural transformation both technically and managerially. The effects of reducing headquarters inquiries, increasing local staff autonomy, and freeing headquarters talent have a management impact that can be described as leveling up the global organization for manufacturers pursuing global expansion.
INSIGHT 02
After operations across five overseas sites stabilized, Company H plans to incorporate CLAVI Mining as a standard tool for launching sites when expanding manufacturing operations to India and Poland. The aim is to shorten new-site launch lead time while standardizing quality.
INSIGHT 03
The company is also incorporating AI into local staff training programs, simultaneously promoting global talent development and on-site knowledge standardization in collaboration with the headquarters HR department. The very model of overseas site operations is evolving into a next-generation model through AI utilization.