Hitachi Construction Machinery

The Customer 

Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. is a global manufacturer of construction equipment, focused on the manufacturing and sale of machinery such as hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders and dump trucks. It operates worldwide, and as of the first half of fiscal year 2024, overseas sales accounted for 85% of the company’s total revenue. 

The company is an active user of technology in its own right. Services such as « ConSite » comprehensively manage information including the operation and inspection status of customers’ construction machinery, reflecting a business that sees IT as central to how it serves its customers, not just how it runs internally. 

Since the 1990s, Hitachi Construction Machinery has accelerated its overseas expansion, growing across Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. As part of this growth, it implemented ERP systems focused on accounting and supply chain management for its overseas group companies, including dealers and wholesalers. 

Over time, however, those systems began to show their age. The strategic driver for change was clear: the company needed a stable, globally deployable platform that could support core operations consistently across markets, while finally enabling centralised management of data from its overseas group companies. 

The Challenge

As Hitachi Construction Machinery expanded internationally from the 1990s onward, each overseas group company, dealers and wholesalers across multiple regions, came to rely on ERP systems focused on accounting and supply chain management. Individually these systems did their job, but collectively they formed an ageing, fragmented estate that was increasingly difficult to sustain and standardise. 

By 2015, system ageing and other factors prompted the company to consider a full overhaul. Rather than continue maintaining disparate systems, it decided to adopt a package-based approach and moved forward with product selection, looking for a single, proven platform it could deploy consistently around the world. 

The requirements were demanding. The system had to manage cost and profit information on a per-machine basis, alongside other core functions, and it needed to offer long-term stability and ease of global deployment. 

It was essential that the system could manage cost and profit information on a per-machine basis, among other necessary functions. In addition, we emphasised the importance of long-term stability and ease of global deployment.

Beyond core operations, the company also had a longer-term goal in view: a platform that would allow the centralised management of data from overseas group companies, making it possible to visualise global operations rather than viewing each market in isolation. 

The Solution

After careful consideration, Hitachi Construction Machinery selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 as the foundation for its new global ERP. As a well-established product with a strong track record and a worldwide pool of skilled engineers and consultants, it was well suited to global expansion and offered confidence in long-term continuity. The chosen strategy was to develop a template at the Japan headquarters and then roll it out sequentially to each overseas site. 

System construction and global deployment were fully supported by Hitachi Solutions Group, primarily Hitachi Solutions and Hitachi Solutions Asia Pacific. Template development and infrastructure design and construction began in 2017. Early challenges around cloud network design, security and multi-tenancy were worked through with guidance from the Hitachi Solutions Group team, allowing the company to make the right architectural decisions from the outset. 

The new ERP system — named IDMS (Importer Dealer Management System) — began its global deployment in Oceania in 2018, with Hitachi Solutions Group representatives joining on-site alongside Hitachi Construction Machinery to support each implementation. Where another vendor’s country rollout had slipped significantly, Hitachi Solutions Group took over and recovered the schedule, and the system was tailored flexibly to accommodate the slightly different business processes dealers follow in each country. 

Hitachi Solutions Group is well-versed in Dynamics 365 and deeply understood the operations of our company and our overseas group companies, which allowed us to systematise without discrepancies.

Why Hitachi Solutions

Hitachi Construction Machinery selected Hitachi Solutions Group for its genuine strength in global deployment, the ability to cover every region of the world evenly, without being weighted towards particular countries. That breadth was backed by deep Dynamics 365 expertise, effective governance during implementation, strong on-the-ground recovery capability when a rollout inherited from another vendor had fallen behind, and a close, trusted collaboration between the local and Japanese teams. 

We trusted their strengths in global deployment. The ability to flexibly cover all regions of the world without being biased towards specific countries or regions was attractive.

The Benefits 

• Global deployment completed at 17 locations (as of October 2024), to a level of quality that satisfies Japanese corporate standards 
• A foundation laid for streamlining business processes across the entire group 
• More countries brought online without increasing the size of the headquarters team 
• Stable, always-on 24/7 operation, supported by Hitachi Solutions Group’s « G-AMO » global maintenance service 
• A centralised data platform enabling global management visualisation and BI analysis, both at headquarters and at each location 

What’s Next? 

Looking ahead, Hitachi Construction Machinery will continue to expand the deployment of IDMS to further countries, including Canada, while carrying out ongoing system expansion and optimisation. Plans include building a global ecommerce site and advancing supply chain reforms using Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management, as well as introducing AI, from AI chatbots for user support through to broader use of AI for data analysis.