Mikuni Corporation
DTM Case Studies
Breaking Free from Excel: How Mikuni Achieved Company-Wide Project Visibility with DTM
Mikuni Corporation is an automotive parts manufacturer that handles over 200 projects each year, spanning everything from initial planning through to mass production. As product development grew increasingly complex and projects grew in scale, their decentralized, Excel-based progress management had reached its limits. The solution they adopted was DTM — a project management add-on built on the Aras platform.
From left: Kazuhiro Ito, Zionex; Tamaki Kashiyama, General Manager, Development Management Department, Mikuni Corporation; and Kunihiko Hayakawa, Expert, Development Management Department, Mikuni Corporation.
The department driving the implementation was the Development Management Department — tasked with transforming the organization from technical "administration" to genuine "management." Both interviewees bring hands-on experience from the front lines of mass production development, and it is precisely that background that has driven them to pursue a system that truly makes a difference for the people doing the work. We spoke with General Manager Tamaki Kashiyama and Expert Kunihiko Hayakawa about the background and deciding factors behind the implementation, and their vision for the future.
Table of Contents
1. Overview: Mikuni's Project Management from Planning to Mass Production
Q: Could you tell us about Mikuni's business and the department and operations involved in this implementation?
Mr. Kashiyama:
Mikuni originally started as a manufacturer of carburetors — the fuel delivery components for motorcycle and automobile engines. Today we also handle throttle bodies, which control air intake, as well as pumps and other components. We manage everything in-house from planning through to mass production, and we implemented DTM to manage product development projects across that entire lifecycle. DTM covers the full schedule from planning to mass production and is accessed by various departments. Previously, each department entered data freely into Excel, which led to disorganized management. Implementing DTM has helped us enforce consistent internal rules, and that's been a real relief.
Mr. Hayakawa:
DTM tends to be thought of as a task management tool for individuals, but we're using it as a company-wide project management platform.
Mr. Kashiyama:
If the master schedule isn't solid, the entire project falls apart — so our policy is to start by managing the master schedule in DTM. That said, we do eventually want to extend it to individual-level management as well.
2. Challenges Before Implementation: 200 Excel Files, No Bird's-Eye View
Mr. Hayakawa:
Because we're in the automotive industry, there are numerous laws, standards, and regulations around quality and safety that must be complied with. Our products themselves have also become complex systems where mechanical, electrical, and software components are all intertwined. Development projects have grown in scale too, and we're increasingly seeing overseas members join them. In that context, we felt we needed a system that could effectively share "who does what, when, and how."
With our previous Excel-based system, project managers had to check progress every day and manually push team members when things fell behind — a very primitive way of managing things. We were eager to find a way to reduce that burden.
Q: Was everything managed in Excel before?
Mr. Hayakawa:
Yes. About 200 projects are launched each year, so we were adding 200 new Excel files every year.
Mr. Kashiyama:
And every time a file was updated, it would get duplicated with a version suffix like -1 or -2, so the numbers just kept growing. The rules around file formats and naming conventions were also left entirely up to individual project managers.
Mr. Hayakawa:
With 200 projects, some inevitably got buried and neglected, and we'd find ourselves scrambling only after things had turned critical. Getting a bird's-eye view of all project statuses was extremely difficult.
3. Selection Process and Deciding Factor: From Aras Partner to DTM
Q: Did you evaluate other solutions before implementing DTM?
Mr. Hayakawa:
We had already identified the features we wanted for project management, so we first asked our in-house engineers whether they could build it internally — and they said they lacked the experience and it would be difficult. We then consulted with our Aras partner, who introduced us to Zionex.
Q: What were the deciding factors or key points for choosing DTM?
Mr. Hayakawa:
The features we wanted were largely covered by DTM's standard functionality, so the most direct path was clearly to start from there and customize. On top of that, Zionex told us they could customize it flexibly, and that made a significant difference.
Mr. Kashiyama:
Managing the full cycle from development to mass production requires quite a bit of customization. Our existing PLM has grown complex from over-customization, but the ability to customize is still something we prioritize very highly.
Mr. Hayakawa:
DTM is a highly flexible tool, but we actually customized it deliberately in the direction of reducing that flexibility — to enforce compliance with our internal rules.
4. Internal Approval: Cost-Effectiveness and DX Promotion
Q: What were the key points for getting internal approval and driving adoption?
Mr. Hayakawa:
We started by calculating the total cost — including subscription fees and customization costs — and estimating the man-hours we'd save. We made the case for cost-effectiveness to our executives and obtained their sign-off.
Mr. Kashiyama:
The company's broader push for information consolidation and digital transformation was also a significant factor.
5. The Road to Implementation: Three Pilot Runs and Integration Challenges
Q: The full production launch began in February 2026 — could you walk us through how the implementation unfolded?
Mr. Hayakawa:
We ran three pilot tests before going live. Each time we evaluated the customized system, numerous issues came up — system bugs, poor usability — and we went through repeated cycles of fixes.
Ito:
There was also a point where you decided to abandon the workflow functionality because it was adding too much operational overhead.
Mr. Hayakawa:
We were concerned that a complex workflow would trigger complaints and resistance from users, so we dropped it. In the end, we created 10 sets of procedural documentation and held internal briefings before launching into full production operation.
Mr. Kashiyama:
So far, no major issues have come up. At this stage you'd normally expect to hear requests and complaints about usability.
Q: Were there any particular challenges during implementation?
Mr. Hayakawa:
The hardest part was seamlessly connecting DTM with our existing project management system. There were cases where the same permission settings existed independently in both systems, or where special identity configurations conflicted. At first, even our in-house engineers didn't catch it — we had to deepen our understanding of DTM piece by piece and resolve things one at a time.
Mr. Kashiyama:
Our engineers didn't know the DTM environment, and Zionex didn't know our environment. Getting both sides aligned was the challenge.
6. Changes and Challenges After Implementation: Still a Work in Progress, But Promising
Q: What changes have you noticed since implementation?
Mr. Kashiyama:
I think it's a bit early to measure. We're tracking man-hours related to project management on a daily basis, but I expect the efficiency gains to become visible after about a year of use.
With Excel, just searching for information takes an enormous amount of time. Being able to search across all projects within the PLM with a bird's-eye view — that alone would be a major win.
Q: Are there areas where DTM still falls short?
Mr. Hayakawa:
With Excel you can write freely, so in our monthly project review meetings, for example, we can visually show how the schedule has changed compared to a previous snapshot. DTM does have a snapshot feature, but it feels a bit limited in that regard. It would also be useful to be able to add comments directly to the Gantt chart.
There were concerns that DTM would actually increase the time spent on tasks, so we timed things with a stopwatch. Registering actual deliverables and linking them to planned deliverables does involve quite a few steps and takes longer than before — that's something I'm concerned about. For everything else, it seems roughly comparable to Excel.
7. DTM's Benefits: Visual Clarity and Cross-Project Aggregation
Q: What do you see as the main benefits of DTM?
Mr. Hayakawa:
My first impression was that the schedule management visuals are excellent — clear and easy to read. The man-hour analysis features and the ability to manage work items at the individual level across projects are also appealing, and I'd like to explore those going forward.
Mr. Kashiyama:
There's clearly a lot more potential to unlock. It's a system we can keep using more and more for efficiency gains and data aggregation, and from a management perspective it's already proving very valuable.
8. Future Expectations: AI Integration and Individual-Level Management
Q: Do you have any expectations for DTM going forward?
Mr. Kashiyama:
Beyond DTM specifically, I think the direction for the entire PLM is to combine AI to improve operational efficiency.
Mr. Hayakawa:
I'm strongly sensing that structured data pairs extremely well with AI. We plan to start with the low-hanging fruit and build from there.
Mr. Kashiyama:
Our expectations for AI integration are high — it would help drive better utilization of the information registered in our PLM.
Mikuni Corporation Company Profile
Business Description:
Parts for four-wheel automobiles and motorcycles; household environment equipment; welfare vehicles; nursing care equipment; aerospace industry components; lawn and garden-related products
Established:
1923
