Smart Craft inc.

Smart Craft Inc., established on June 15, 2021, is a key player in Japan's push for digital transformation within the manufacturing sector. The company was founded by Fumiya Ukibe, who serves as its Representative Director. Ukibe's professional background includes a stint in consulting sales for factory automation and IoT products at Keyence Corporation, followed by a role as a strategy consultant at Accenture, where he focused on growth and M&A strategies for various industries. This combination of hands-on factory floor experience and high-level strategic planning informed the creation of Smart Craft, aiming to address inefficiencies in Japan's core manufacturing industry.

The company operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, providing the 'Smart Craft' platform to manufacturing clients, with a focus on small to medium-sized enterprises. This cloud-based service is designed to digitize and streamline factory floor operations, replacing traditional paper- and Excel-based systems for tasks like production reports and performance tallying. By using tablets or smartphones, workers can input data directly into the system, which then offers real-time visualization of production progress and aggregates data into an accessible dashboard. The platform aims to solve critical issues such as inefficient data collection, the lack of real-time visibility into factory operations, and the difficulty in leveraging data for process improvements.

Smart Craft's business strategy is centered on creating a new standard for the 'monozukuri' (manufacturing) industry, moving it from a reliance on intuition and experience to a data-driven approach. The company has successfully secured funding to fuel its growth, including a seed round of 50 million JPY in January 2022 and a subsequent round of 110 million JPY in June 2023. These funds are earmarked for strengthening the team and further developing the product, with plans to add functionalities like traceability management and data integration from IoT devices. Key investors include Genesia Ventures, ANOBAKA, and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

Keywords: manufacturing DX, factory automation, production management software, SaaS, Japanese manufacturing, monozukuri tech, industrial IoT, production data visualization, digital transformation, factory efficiency, production reporting, data-driven manufacturing, Fumiya Ukibe, Genesia Ventures, shop floor management, smart factory, process optimization, manufacturing operations, cloud manufacturing, industrial software