Suzuki Motor Corporation

Client

Suzuki Motor Corporation

Suzuki Motor Corporation is one of Japan's leading mobility manufacturers, engaged in the manufacture and sale of automobiles, motorcycles, and outboard motors. Since launching the "Suzulight" mini vehicle in 1955, the company has consistently pursued the craft of building small cars. Suzuki products that concentrate this small-car expertise — the "Alto," launched as a practical mini vehicle that became a hit particularly among women, the "Wagon R" and "Hustler," which opened up new categories, and the "Swift," which has earned high acclaim worldwide — are beloved in countries around the world. Under the corporate philosophy of "standing in the customer's perspective," the company provides products that support the lives of people around the globe.

Summary

Challenges before the engagement

• More than 20 years had passed since the systems went into operation, and repeated modifications had made them complex and bloated
• The use of outdated programming languages and growing management costs meant system maintenance was reaching its limits
• The adoption of the latest technologies such as cloud and AI had fallen behind, creating a gap with the realities of the field and with technology trends

Goodpatch's approach and outcomes after the engagement

• Held a total of four cross-departmental workshops, gathering members who use the systems daily and envisioning the ideal future state while incorporating users' perspectives
• In parallel with the workshops, gathered user statements from departmental interviews, reflecting improvement points derived from the current state in the structuring of ideal-state ideas
• Elevated the extracted ideas into two concepts, "PARTNER" and "GAME," and visualized them as a vision prototype
• Shared concrete experiences internally through a demo session of the vision prototype, providing a guidepost for discussions toward implementation in 2040

Planning and Conceptualization Phase: Thinking About Systems from the User's Perspective

"SUIT," the technical document management system that supports Suzuki's foundations, and "STAGE," the drawing management system, had been in place for more than 20 years and stood at a major crossroads.

The aging of the programming languages was especially serious, and limits to sustainable future operation were beginning to show. Yet these are systems used company-wide — including exchanges with overseas sites and business partners — that "cannot be stopped." While keenly aware of the need for a large-scale renewal, there was concern that improvements based on the existing framework would end up as nothing more than "rebuilding the old."

"'SUIT,' the system for managing the various technical documents generated in manufacturing processes, and 'STAGE,' the system for managing drawings and CAD data for parts design, are both critical systems at the very core of Suzuki that have been used for more than 20 years. However, as a result of continually incorporating user requests over those 20 years, the systems had become complex, and their management had fallen into a cumbersome state. If we were going to renew them anyway, we wanted to build new systems starting from user needs, rather than basing them on the existing systems."

— Kazuki Oi, Engineering Systems Section, IT Systems Department, Suzuki Motor Corporation

"When we were consulted about the renewal of STAGE/SUIT, I felt that rather than proposing a package, what was needed was a consulting phase to organize what Suzuki wanted to do and move forward from there. We thought Goodpatch's design thinking approach would be effective for that, which is how we came to work together on this project."

— Daisuke Tomoi, Central Japan Division, ITOCHU Corporation

"There is a high hurdle to incorporating design thinking, which is rarely used in business system development. But taking on board Suzuki's desire to 'build a system that reflects the opinions of everyone who uses it,' and in the sense of making it a system that can continue to be used long into the future, creating a planning concept with an added future-oriented perspective was an important point."

— Sota Tarumi, Development Section 3, Central Japan Development Department, Central Japan Division, ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation

Rather than simply replacing functions, the goal was to place the latest technologies such as cloud and AI at the very center and evolve the systems into a "technical information management platform" that will support the Suzuki of the future. As a first step, a partner was needed to help imagine "future ways of working" that had not yet become apparent.

Four Workshops to Envision a Future Free from Technical Constraints

Goodpatch fully supported the planning and conceptualization phase for roughly six months starting in November 2024. In the first half of the project, participants were recruited from diverse departments including design engineering, design, and production, and Goodpatch designed and ran a series of four workshops to examine the value and functions the systems should provide, starting from a vision of the future world.

To envision the "ideal state" by working backward from the year 2040, the project adopted the "backcasting" method — working backward from values and ideas that do not yet exist — and the "worldview design" way of thinking, which turns attention to broader perspectives such as organizations and society. The workshops were designed so that ideas would emerge from a wide range of perspectives: the vertical axis of time and the horizontal axis of society.

Workshop 1: Future insights and mindset — considering signs of the future

The first session covered an understanding of the overall picture of the four workshops and established the mindset for a future-oriented program. Referring to information such as prior research and studies on the mobility market and the possibilities of movement in people's lives, participants explored their own thoughts and phenomena of interest.

Workshop 2: Creating an illustrated guide to the people working at the future SUZUKI

In the second workshop, participants raised the resolution of their image of the future world through the "Illustrated Guide to People Working at the Future Suzuki" exercise. A warm-up exercise in which participants depicted their own profiles and daily routines promoted self-disclosure and mutual understanding. By incorporating a process in which drafts created in individual work were completed based on feedback from the group, the exercise also became an opportunity to discover the value and potential of collaborative work.

Workshop 3: Exploring the value demanded by future ways of working — Value Proposition Canvas exercise

The third workshop used the "Value Proposition Canvas" to explore the value that will be demanded by future ways of working. To extract value that would feed into the renewal, participants brought together Value Proposition Canvases developed in groups, and while organizing and integrating them, discussed ideas in the form of tools that people working at the future SUZUKI would likely want.

Workshop 4: Physical workshop to conceive the ultimate STAGE/SUIT

In the final session of the workshop series, the ideas about the future envisioned so far were used as raw material to output the desirable form of the future "STAGE" and "SUIT." Based on the ideas that had been repeatedly diverged and converged on an online whiteboard up to that point, participants carried out a physical, hands-on exercise: extracting the appeal points of systems and functions onto large sheets of paper and attaching them with sticky notes. Through the four workshops, many ideas for functions expected of the future information management system were generated, completing a list that would serve the subsequent steps.

Although there were concerns about workload since all four workshops were held during working hours, many people were able to take part in this forum for envisioning the future.

"I think the benefits of bringing users together really showed. It was precisely because we started by thinking about the future that we could draw out free-flowing ideas. The direction going forward was largely solidified in this phase, and I think the value lies in the fact that it came up from the user side."

— Kazuhiko Shohata, Engineering Systems Section, IT Systems Department, Suzuki Motor Corporation

A Vision Prototype That Feeds into System Design and Conceptualization

In the second half of the project, a "vision prototype" was created to raise the resolution of the ideas in order to move concretely into system design and conceptualization.

While typical prototypes are often built by listing up desired functions, in this project the prototype was created by working backward from the ideal future, based on the ideas from the workshops. Goodpatch structured the vast number of ideas gained from the workshops and proposed two central concepts: "PARTNER," in which AI supports users in achieving their goals, and "GAME," which brings enjoyment and motivation to work.

For the prototype's creative direction, a bird was adopted for "PARTNER" — inspired by the fact that Suzuki's old logo featured a bird — while "GAME" adopted the imagery of an editing game, with the hope that finding enjoyment in playful mechanisms would make people want to use the system willingly. By narrowing the creative concepts, the value delivered by each scenario was sharpened, imbued with the desire for people to enjoy interacting with the prototypes.

"Bringing gamification elements into a business system is fascinating, isn't it? I think users could easily sense the difference from conventional systems and got a feel for what future systems could be."

— Daisuke Tomoi, ITOCHU Corporation

"Both were very good prototypes that built on everything up to that point. STAGE's drawing registration and modification work is routine work, so being able to do it with a game-like feel seems like it would make it enjoyable. As for PARTNER, they really captured the keywords that came up in the workshops. We've been using AI internally recently as well, and conversational AI feels approachable — I thought it would be wonderful to have something like this."

— Kazuhiko Shohata, Suzuki Motor Corporation

Gaps naturally arise if the prototype is regarded as a real system, but what each person felt when facing the prototype became questions to be discussed toward future implementation — serving, we believe, as a major guidepost pointing the direction of the project.

A Prototype Experience Session That Lets People Feel the Future

To help people form an image of actually using the prototype, Goodpatch not only created the prototype but also held an in-person experience session where participants interacted with it following scenarios Goodpatch had prepared. By presenting the ideas expanded in the workshops as a tangible prototype, the session fulfilled the major role of letting people imagine the actual experience.

"If the current STAGE/SUIT with modifications is a customized car, the prototype is a concept car — a car of the future. I think that's the impression it gave people."

— Kazuhiko Shohata, Suzuki Motor Corporation

Reflecting on the Project

Finally, we asked everyone involved in the project for their thoughts on the roughly six-month system planning and conceptualization project.

"We had never held workshops in a system development project before, and I was anxious about how much we could accomplish in the limited period of six months. But CTC and Goodpatch ran things well, and we were able to compile the functions needed for the future. We were even able to connect that to requirements definition, so for now I'm relieved."

— Kazuki Oi, Suzuki Motor Corporation

"What mattered in this renewal was that the very concept of STAGE/SUIT be made new, so I think the approach of 'starting from the ideal state rather than from functions' was the right fit. Of course we need to incorporate existing functions, but if we had started there, it could easily have become a rebuild of the current systems. To realize what our previous section manager always insisted on — 'if we're going to build something new, let's make it something exciting' — I believe this approach was necessary."

— Kazuhiko Shohata, Suzuki Motor Corporation

"I think the planning and conceptualization phase was about redefining 'what the new STAGE/SUIT means to Suzuki.' Until now they were tools we had no choice but to use within our business processes, but by holding workshops while thinking about the future, an entirely different kind of existence came into view. I don't think that would have emerged without the design thinking approach. How will the vision for the new STAGE/SUIT that we all conceived together be carried into the coming phases, what kind of new system will be completed in 2027, and what will it become for the Suzuki of the future? I'm very much looking forward to what comes next."

— Takeuchi, Suzuki Motor Corporation

Interview

Further details of this project are available in this interview: "Suzuki Takes On Its First Core System Renewal in 20 Years: A Design Approach Advancing DX Through 'Future Orientation' and 'User Participation'"

Credit

Quality Management & Supervision: Kazuhiro Izawa
Design Strategist: Hideyuki Endo
Service Designer / Design Strategist: Arihito Takashina
Research: Haruya Suzuki
BX Designer / UI Designer: Kai Qin
Design Strategist / UI Designer: Daiki Sato
Alliance: Yuta Awano