Services & Platforms

With the spread of the Internet of Things (IoT), data is being propagated at an increasingly fast pace by businesses and consumers. This data can be a source of new value. Along with customers in various business areas, Hitachi is currently working on digital innovations to create new value.

Lumada is the product of the ideas that have come out of our collaborative efforts to create innovation. It is designed to let customers create innovations from digital technologies in a speedy and efficient manner by bringing together the wealth of expertise Hitachi has amassed over many years in the areas of IT and operational technology (OT). Lumada is composed of the three elements below.

(1) Co-creation

The customer works with Hitachi to develop data-driven strategies that transform their business, operations, products, and services. Hitachi systematizes the methods, IT tools, and spaces used to enable rapid and efficient co-creation with customers as “NEXPERIENCE.” Through NEXPERIENCE, a customer can share their issues and vision with Hitachi. Then Hitachi develops hypotheses for solving those problems, and their value can be validated through prototyping.

(2) Domain expertise

Hitachi's industry-specific expertise and business process knowledge can be applied customers' digital innovation in phases ranging from planning to design and implementation. Customer cases are created to identify the elements that illustrate how value has been generated from data, and the type of technologies that have been applied to artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics. These customer cases are helpful in creating methods properly tailored to the customer's management issues.

(3) Platform products and technologies (IoT platform)

An open and secure platform that enables a large number of stakeholders to share ideas and data on a larger scale is a vital requirement for rapidly bringing co-creation processes to life. By bringing together expertise amassed over the company's history, Hitachi provides cutting-edge products and technologies designed to enable the customer to rapidly create digital innovations tailored to its needs.

The IoT platform described in item (3) above has a platform architecture enabling the quick development and implementation of advanced digital solutions, and is composed of six main layers. The Edge layer relays device data to IoT systems. The Core layer creates a data lake and stores data. The Data Management layer gathers and processes data. The Analytics layer analyzes data using AI and analytics technology. The Studio layer provides visual representations of results. And, the Foundry layer provides IoT system infrastructure such as servers and networks. The IoT platform provides the following four benefits to software platforms:

(a) Intelligence

Advanced analytics, machine learning, and asset avatars to provide a 360 degree view and actionable insights.

(b) Composable

Open architecture to integrate with third-party alternatives and different elements to deliver best outcomes.

(c) Secure

Security of assets, data, identity, and access management.

(d) Flexible

Runs on-premises and/or on cloud to meet customer's needs.

Recent achievements and results are illustrated below, centering on the IoT platform of item (3) above as an example.

The recently expanding habitats of wildlife such as wild boars and deer has increased the severity of crop damage and become a major issue of public concern in rural Japan. With licensed hunters advancing in age, the efficiency of trapping is questionable.

With an urgent need to remedy the crop damage being caused by its local population of wild boars, Goto City in Nagasaki Prefecture has started to use a wildlife damage prevention system provided by Hitachi. The system is connected to information from wildlife detection and other sensors and to a geographic information system (GIS) designed for wildlife damage prevention. The system provides map-based notifications and visual displays depicting the state of wildlife sightings and trappings. It has been able to assist with efficient trap setting and comprehensive planning. The number of wild boars trapped in Goto has increased more than five-fold relative to the previous year, and trappers have become able to patrol efficiently by getting a clear picture of trap states in advance.

The system is provided as a cloud-based service (the wildlife damage prevention assistance service), enabling a large number of users to start using it rapidly. The system's applications will be expanded in the future by integrating it with services for solving various other problems affecting municipalities and their residents.

The recent rise in digitalization has generated manufacturer interest in the creation of efficient production systems through digital twinning^*1.

An important requirement for achieving this goal is to compile all of the various types of data generated by factory processes at physically separate locations, and to reproduce all the processes in a digital space. Trial data analysis can then be continuously performed with the aim of total optimization. The solution makes it easy to choose and compile OT/IT data accumulated separately by several different processes. It provides a data usage platform that continuously helps improve productivity through AI analysis and simulations. Specifically, it uses the graph database^*2 concept to create an original data model composed of production operation data and 4M data^*3. This model makes it easy to obtain visual representations of the connections among all of the many different operations and data spanning every production process. It enables production managers and other staff without IT-expert knowledge to easily extract and integrate the required data when needed, helping speed the data analysis plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle.

Before its release, the solution was used in a joint demonstration test done at a model vehicle manufacturing plant. The test was part of Hitachi's collaborative creation^*4 efforts with Toyota Motor Corporation to create a high-efficiency production model.

*1

The concept of faithfully reproducing factory- and product-related physical-world events in a digital space in real time. A technique used to model actual production plants and products for delivery. Facilitates real-world plant control and management by creating a simulation space that imitates the real world, serving as its twin.

*2

A graph-structure database that depicts objects and the connections among them in abstract form. Enables the retrieval of data matching given conditions by tracing the connections starting from a given node (person or object).

*3

Industry term for production data related to personnel, equipment, materials, and methods. 4M stands for man, machine, material, and method.

*4

Hitachi News release: “Toyota and Hitachi Embark on Collaborative Creation Aiming to Build a High-Efficiency Production Model Using IoT Platform,” (Oct. 4, 2017)

The distribution and logistics industries have recently been generating a growing demand for methods of increasing operational efficiency in response to a number of different management issues now facing them. These issues include an increasingly diverse array of products and services, a shrinking workforce, and heavier workloads being generated by larger quantities of goods resulting from the growing use of electronic commerce.

Hitachi has responded to these issues by examining warehouse operations, which form the hub of the distribution industry. To enable operations to be optimized for warehouse conditions, the company has developed the Hitachi AI Technology/Warehouse Operational Efficiency Improvement Service. The service uses AI to analyze warehouse data and the work records of operators, and applies the results from the AI to improve operational efficiency on an ongoing basis.

The service uncovers problems such as on-site operational efficiency improvement efforts that are reaching their limit, and operations that are becoming concentrated on particular skilled employees. The AI discovers factors that greatly affect these types of operational problems and that have so far gone unnoticed, and response measures are proposed for them. For example, warehouse slotting plans expected to improve picking work efficiency can be provided along with lists of specific changes in terms of how goods can be positioned better. By providing these resources, the service reduces the time needed for the picking work and helps optimize it continuously.

To provide solutions to customer issues and comprehensive assistance for business growth, Hitachi will consider using the service to augment its lineup of services designed for streamlining areas such as staff placement and stock quantities.

Hitachi's experience-oriented approach is a method and set of activities used for supporting customers' business process re-engineering and creating new customer services through co-creation. It focuses on the value of personal experience gained through business operations and services, and on combining the expertise of both the customer and Hitachi. Since Hitachi began working on this experience-oriented approach effort, it has supported the formation of consensus among all the stakeholders during the ultra-upstream process project of building IT systems for a various customers. Through these efforts it has accumulated an extensive track record of achievements that improve business value by developing systems without reworking.

The scope of application of experience-oriented approach has recently been expanded to encompass the further-upstream service production processes done to create new customer business areas and services. In the case of co-creation with Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd., for example, Hitachi conducted co-creation among multiple interdepartmental members. This approach was effective for extracting input and feedback about creating new services for office buildings from all the relevant parties, and for deriving the direction of future new services premised on the use of digital technologies.

In the future, Hitachi will continue to contribute to customers' further realization of digital shift by expanding the experience-oriented approach itself, conducting prototyping and demonstration-testing of ideas driven by digital technologies and building on those achievements.

The risk of cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure or particular organizations has been rising recently, and the attack methods are becoming more advanced and ingenious day by day. Therefore, it is becoming difficult to deal with these cyber-attacks just by technology-based approaches (installing conventional security software), making organization-based responses a vital requirement. However, security staff shortages are an issue for some organizations too, and hence security staff training is an urgent need.

Hitachi categorizes security staff into (1) advanced security staff, (2) security-oriented staff, and (3) IT-literate staff, and focuses on providing training for the second category. This staff training is designed to enable adaptation to known attacks. The coursework planned and provided enables participants to (1) understand cyber-attacks, (2) think about security, and (3) teach prevention and response methods. Hitachi intends to plan, study, and provide staff training schemes for IoT and control systems in the future.

With a growing number of companies using IT to create new business recently, the time spent on IT system operation management needs to be minimized to enable IT department staff to focus on developing new solutions.

Hitachi Automation Director is a software product designed to address these needs by automating the operation of IT infrastructure. Automated IT system operation can reduce system operation costs while providing high-quality IT operation by reducing system operation errors. While introducing automation has previously been a challenging process, Hitachi Automation Director makes it easy by providing automation content that incorporates Hitachi's system operation expertise. It also enables customization tailored to the customer's system operations.

Hitachi has also begun offering a service for customers outside Japan that provides cloud-based integrated monitoring of their IT systems, reducing management costs to zero. The service's extensive benefits include rapid installation and increased system operation efficiency through integrated monitoring of multiple IT systems.

Hitachi is planning to add a service that enables autonomous system operation by using machine learning and AI together with learning data sourced from a wide array of system operation records.

The accelerating pace of digitalization is bringing mainframes into focus as another area of interest. In addition to their role in ensuring stable operations for existing core operations, companies are now also looking toward mainframes as tools to help create new business value from legacy core data. But mainframes also need to be reliable enough to securely protect important data from security threats posed by cyber-attacks that are becoming more sophisticated every day.

AP10000 is an enterprise server provided by Hitachi that comes with Virtual-storage Operating System 3/eXtensible System Product (VOS3/XS). It is a high-performance/high-reliability platform that helps ensure the stable operation of core systems. It provides flexible and highly expandable open system connection, and uses advanced technology to ensure robust security. It helps customers create new business value while benefiting from the use of their existing assets. The AP10000 VOS3/XS system's features are as follows:

1. Improves processing performance and enables faster core operations.
2. A database encryption function provides a secure system environment.
3. Features such as a space-saving housing make system installation easy.

Hitachi has for many years been embedding deep learning into analysis technology and building up a successful track record in this area. Deep learning is currently used for a wide range of applications such as image and character recognition, and Hitachi is working on developing a number of different applied technologies driven by it.

The company provides a service that gives users access to a development/learning environment for deep learning. The service is designed to enable research into deep learning-based prediction/decision-making models and to provide a development/evaluation environment for services driven by these models. It is a cloud-based service that provides high-performance/high-reliability bare metal servers. The service uses SR24000/DL1 with four high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). It uses the Ubuntu^* operating system and has a lineup of accessory services also available for installation. For a lower initial investment, users can access an environment for deep learning development that can be used easily when needed.

In the future, models developed using the service will be provided in the form of API-driven services designed for use with customer operations via a common deep learning cloud platform.

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See the list of “Trademarks.”

In recent years, IT teams have faced a need to enhance mission-critical systems, while also streamlining their operations and proactively introducing global standard technologies that are easily connectable to open systems – in an effort to adapt to rapid changes resulting from progress in digitalization.Hitachi responded to these needs in September 2018 with the release of a highly reliable platform solution that assists the long-term stable operation of mission-critical systems. The solution is designed to provide an open and highly reliable virtualization platform by combining Hitachi's original reliability enhancement technology with VMware's vSphere^* and a highly reliable Hitachi server. They use technology that has been demonstration-tested in collaboration with VMware^*. The impact of failures in the virtualization environment can be localized and performance can be stabilized. A special support system created with VMware also enables long-term support and rapid problem-solving when failures arise. A hardware maintenance service of up to 10 years in duration is provided for the server used as the platform, helping ensure the stable operation of mission-critical systems.

The features above enable greater system operational efficiency while providing stable core system operation over the long term. They help customers expand their digital data-based business areas by optimizing IT system investment.

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See the list of “Trademarks.”

νCOSS S-zero is a safety controller for protecting mission-critical plant systems, their employees, and local residents, offering a new generation of control systems realizing sophisticated control purely by hardware, with no use of software. νCOSS S-zero has been certified for Safety Integrity Level (SIL) 3 according to the IEC 61508 series international standard for safety systems by TÜV Rheinland Industrie Service GmbH, a globally known German safety inspection company. In order to realize higher safety integrity in a redundant system configuration, fault avoidance measures compliant with SIL 4 have been applied. The use of no software makes malware attacks theoretically impossible. The product has also been certified for Security Level (SL) 1^* according to the IEC 62443-4 series international standard for cyber security of system components.

νCOSS S-zero will be used in the safety protection of a nuclear power plant in the UK [UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR)]. During the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the UK ABWR by UK. safety regulators, completed in December 2017, the product design and development has been accepted as adequate. The product is also expected to be used in various applications requiring a high level of safety and reliability, for example, chemical plants, gas turbines, etc.

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Security Level 1 (SL 1) indicates being able to withstand non-malicious attacks.

Hitachi's RS90 Series of information control servers feature high reliability, long-term supply, and long-term maintenance. They are suited for information control systems used by a wide range of industries such as power and public transport.

To meet recent demand for high-speed processing in information control systems, the RS90 Series has recently been augmented with the release of the high-end RS90/1100 model.

The product is designed for improved performance, and comes with a high-performance processor (2.1 GHz, 12 cores) and up to 64 GB of memory. It also supports reliability-enhancing functions such as power supply and fan redundancy/online replacement, a solid-state drive (SSD) software mirroring function, and a system duplication function.

Despite its 2U rack size, the server supports a wide range of interfaces and comes with 14 local area network (LAN) ports, six universal serial bus (USB) ports, and four SSDs. The development of an operating system with outstanding real-time performance and failure analysis has resulted in a product that meets function expansion needs while enabling system migration from previous models.

Hitachi is planning to acquire foreign safety standard certification to expand the server's range of applications.