Overview
Asahimatsu Foods Co., LTD. is a food company established in 1950 and listed on the TSE Standard. It is widely known for its popular products such as Asahi Tofu (Koya-Tofu, dried tofu) and Namamisozui (Freeze-dried Miso Soup). Asahimatsu Foods has migrated its traditional Excel-based Supply & Demand adjustment operations to a cloud-native application. MySQL HeatWave Database Service was selected as a low-cost and secure cloud database that can scale as the business grows.
Business Challenges
Asahimatsu Foods has been migrating various systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure since 2020. The migration to the cloud aims to address challenges of the existing on-premises applications, while providing cloud native, low cost and secure solutions.
Supply & Demand Adjustment operations are especially important tasks for determining the new items and quantities to be produced. The input criteria include market demand, past performance, production capacity of factories and procurement status of raw materials.
Traditional Excel-based Supply & Demand Adjustment operations required time-consuming processing of sales performance data and production management data for analysis. There were also system restrictions on the analysis method. In addition, the traditional Supply & Demand Adjustment operations required manual work, such as sending faxes or e-mails. Such manual work included: processing the forecast data obtained from the analysis into Excel, sending it as order instructions to the main raw material supplier, or transmitting production instructions to the company's own plants.
Verification of selection
Database Technology Inc., a database specialized consulting company, considered the selection of a database product to be the most important factor for the success of the cloud migration of the Supply & Demand Adjustment operations. The company selected a cloud database service based on the following key criteria;
- Stability: Provide consistent performance and availability under the expected load
- Managed service: the routine operations of the cloud and database service is managed automatically
- Security: With features designed to protect cloud operations
- Flexibility: To scale the application as the business grows
- Cost effectiveness: TCO savings over competitive cloud offerings
As a result, MySQL HeatWave Database Service was selected as the database that met all these requirements. Optimizing overall costs was also a very important factor. The company selected Oracle's fully-managed database service to avoid database management operations. This enables the company to focus on application features that help grow their business.
*Database Technology Inc. presented results of their evaluation of MySQL Database Service at the db tech showcase online 2021 in November 2021. The presentation material is available here:
Business Results
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a flexible cloud platform that meets security, cost reduction, and the business expansion requirements. In September 2021, the Supply & Demand Adjustment operations were moved to the cloud utilizing MySQL HeatWave Database Service.
MySQL HeatWave Database Service is used to manage the data for sales performance, production, and supply demand forecasting. Team members empowered to do analysis independently. In addition, a new application for analyzing, forecasting, and proposing supply & demand data has been developed. This application makes it easier to forecast sales and production. Integration of data has led to a significant improvement in workflow, as traditional manual operation has been eliminated. In the future, the company is considering to introduce MySQL HeatWave as a platform to manage wider variety of supply & demand data, to gain deeper insights, as well as to accelerate and automate data analysis.
About Asahimatsu Foods Co., LTD.
ASAHIMATSU FOODS CO., LTD.is a Japanese food manufacturer established in 1950, with its head office in Iida City, Nagano Prefecture and head office in Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture. The company is Japan's No.1 manufacturer of Koya-Tofu (dried tofu). It is attracting attention as a traditional and healthy ingredient in Japanese cuisine. It is also widely known for its popular products such as 'Asahi Tofu (Koya-Tofu)' and 'Namaisozu (Miso soup)'. In addition to the thorough control of food safety and quality, from the management of raw materials and production processes to the labelling of product packaging, the company is also actively involved in data analysis, such as analyzing customer needs for further productivity improvements and product development.
Oracle partners
Database Technology Inc. was established in 1995 as a 'group of database experts'. The company has handled a lot of projects to date, while constantly refining its technology to maximize the cost-effectiveness of database construction. In addition to its database-related business, it is actively developing its cloud services business, designing, and building Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and MySQL HeatWave Database Service.