TOKYO - A feature from BS TV Tokyo’s program Nikkei Morning Plus FT, broadcast on March 24th, 2026, highlights how startups are accelerating growth through proprietary technologies and services, with a focus on CadDi, a company aiming to transform the manufacturing industry through data utilization.
Manufacturing plays a significant role in Japan and other advanced economies, accounting for around 20 percent of GDP in Japan, yet many companies—particularly smaller firms—have struggled to advance digitalization, leaving valuable knowledge siloed and underutilized.
CadDi seeks to address this challenge by enabling the sharing and effective use of such knowledge through digital platforms. With more than 800 employees worldwide, the company is led by CEO Yushin Kato, who aims to bring structural change to the global manufacturing sector.
After graduating from the University of Tokyo, Kato joined McKinsey & Company, where he worked on projects supporting manufacturers, before founding CadDi in 2017. The company initially operated a service likened to an Amazon-style marketplace for custom metal parts, connecting manufacturers seeking to place orders based on technical drawings with factories capable of producing them.
Through that business, CadDi accumulated data from roughly 5,000 client companies, each generating large volumes of design drawings and product specifications. Processing such data manually proved difficult, prompting the company to develop its own AI system capable of analyzing drawings and optimizing supplier selection.
As demand grew from clients seeking not just parts but also the underlying software and systems, CadDi shifted its focus toward offering its AI-powered data platform, now known as CadDi Drawer. The service integrates the company’s manufacturing expertise with proprietary technology developed since its founding.
According to government data, Japan has around 330,000 manufacturing companies, with the sector accounting for roughly one-fifth of GDP, yet about 30 percent of firms have not begun digitalization efforts, and more than half have only partially implemented such measures.
Kato notes that while manufacturers have a strong culture of continuous improvement, barriers to digitalization remain, particularly because core industry data—such as 3D CAD files and technical drawings—is highly specialized and not easily processed by conventional AI systems. CadDi’s technology addresses this gap.
In many manufacturing firms, it is not uncommon to manage tens or even hundreds of thousands of drawings, with revisions often made on-site and information rarely shared across teams. Differences in drawing orientation or format have historically made it difficult to identify similar past designs.
CadDi’s AI overcomes these limitations by analyzing drawings to estimate their three-dimensional shapes and determine similarities, enabling users to quickly access relevant historical data. By linking drawings with order histories and records of past defects, the system also helps improve product quality.
Kato emphasizes that while such data represents a valuable asset, its sheer volume has made it difficult to utilize effectively. By enabling constant access and reuse of accumulated data, CadDi allows companies to build a structure in which knowledge continuously compounds, transforming experience and information into new sources of value.
Source: テレ東BIZ
