Omron Ventures Invests in Smart Craft for Manufacturing Digitalization

Omron Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of OMRON Corporation, announced it has entered into an investment agreement with Smart Craft Inc. Smart Craft is a startup dedicated to creating a new standard in the manufacturing industry by leveraging technology to promote the smart factory initiative.

Many manufacturing lines in Japan still rely on manual labor and analog information management, presenting challenges for productivity improvements and the transfer of technical skills. Smart Craft aims to address these issues through digitalization.

The company offers a DX platform for manufacturing sites that provides end-to-end data management, covering everything from work instructions to progress monitoring and performance data aggregation. This solution facilitates the adoption of IT for real-time data management and utilization, thereby contributing to the DX of manufacturing operations.

This investment aligns with OMRON's mid-term roadmap, the SF 2nd Stage, and its GEMBA DX strategy. The company aims to combine data from its own devices with other site data to create valuable insights and solve manufacturing challenges. The partnership is expected to accelerate the utilization of data related to devices, people, and processes on the factory floor.