wattXplorer Case Study

The head office houses the technical and general affairs departments, the building on the left side of the photo contains offices and conference rooms, and the building on the right contains the laboratory. In the Technology Department, we use a variety of development tools, including 2D and 3D CAD and 3D printers, to tackle unique development themes every day. In recent years, we have also been focusing on the "IoT" field, and sales of IoT products have been steadily increasing. Starting in 2025, we will establish a new specialized department, the DX Solutions Department, to propose DX solutions to customer problems, and establish a system that will enable us to propose optimal solutions to a wide range of customers. In the General Affairs Department, we have experts in each field to smoothly carry out a wide range of tasks, such as accounting, human resources, legal affairs, and support for each department. In addition, in response to the recent trend toward a decarbonized society, the General Affairs Department has also begun calculating CO2 emissions. We present an interview with our General Affairs Manager about our new product, wattXplorer, which is scheduled to be launched in April 2025.

The head of the technical department at the time (now President Wada) actively participated in consortiums and industrial association meetings held in Kobe, and realized that the trend toward a decarbonized society was also spreading to small and medium-sized enterprises. As a solution, we have begun developing "wattXplorer," a total package service that is easy for even small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt, including retrofitting to existing equipment, easy installation, and provision of visualization screens. This concept was selected for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's GO-TECH subsidy program in fiscal year 2022, and development accelerated rapidly. As the General Affairs Department, we have been waiting for a suitable solution that would allow us to know the CO2 emissions (power consumption) of each piece of equipment, so we have high hopes for the wattXplorer. Because CO2 emissions are invisible, it is difficult to know how much CO2 is being emitted from each piece of equipment, and even if you could figure it out, it is difficult to understand intuitively from just a list of numbers. The wattXplorer visualization screen can display graphs of CO2 emissions for each piece of equipment and for the entire factory in real time, allowing employees to understand intuitively and is expected to further raise awareness of energy conservation. In addition, the recent rise in energy costs requires investment in energy-saving equipment and power saving. By installing the wattXplorer at each facility, we believe that the priority of equipment that is eligible for energy conservation will become clear, and energy conservation activities will be promoted from the perspective of cost-effectiveness.

I had heard that if the outdoor unit is dirty, it will consume more electricity. Furthermore, having received similar findings from an energy conservation diagnostician, the company conducted a demonstration experiment by installing the wattXporer in the air conditioning system at its headquarters to confirm the extent to which energy savings could be expected by actually cleaning the outdoor unit. As a result, we were able to confirm an energy saving effect of 23%. Based on this result, together with the factory manager, we are planning to install wattXplorer in the air conditioning and equipment at all our bases and work on further energy saving. In addition, in January 2025, a customer contacted us to say that they wanted to work with us as a supplier model to calculate Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, and we have begun calculating CO2 emissions in tandem with the customer. By installing a wattXplorer at each piece of equipment, we will be able to calculate CFP (carbon footprint) and other data, and we believe we will be able to meet more than 100% of our customers' requests.