Kurita Water Industries' Maeda Yuji (前田 雄史) appeared on Leadership Live Japan and discussed extending design philosophy into the digital domain and the background to reforming the production value chain. The discussion highlighted that digital is a means, while the core lies in designing the mechanisms of the company.
After joining Kurita Water Industries in 1997, Maeda Yuji (前田 雄史) spent many years working as a plant engineer responsible for design. Looking back on his experience of moving between departments and establishing new ones, he says he was "designing the way design itself was done." After moving into the digital domain, he also took on a CDO-like role, positioning digital transformation as an extension of design rather than merely an IT issue.
Launched in 2023, the Production Value Chain Project is progressing toward rebuilding design, manufacturing and construction as one integrated process through design automation, coordination between the engineering and supply chains, and earlier front-loading. The company also moved forward with introducing a formal performance evaluation and compensation system as part of its organizational reforms.
To prevent the project from ending as a PoC, the team redesigned frontline issues from an issue-driven perspective, separated the PoC function within a team of around 150 people, and adopted an approach that accelerated validation and feedback cycles. The results were then rolled out across the company, developing into company-wide structural reform.
Going forward, the company aims to improve the quality and speed of decision-making through the use of AI and data, and evolve into a "comprehensive water informatics company" as a water treatment company. Maeda Yuji (前田 雄史) emphasizes a leadership model that connects vision with implementation, serving as a bridge between management and the frontline.