Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Reconfiguring a complicated layered network structure and removing barriers to efficient communication

Murata Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (Murata) is one of the world's top suppliers of electronic components with products in a diverse range of markets, including recent expansion into automobile, energy, and healthcare sectors. Over 90 percent of Murata's sales are international.

Maintaining business agility with global customers and a globally dispersed workforce emphasizes the need for efficient communication. In addition, Murata's "value network" - a concept of connected employees who come together, as needed, to implement a customer's vision, no matter where in the world the customer or individual employees are located - depends on smooth collaboration between global sites and functions, including business partners.

Takahiro Sakamori, senior manager in the Information Technology Planning Department explained. "A layered regional network structure can no longer assure service quality when we have increasing international traffic in addition to globalization and cloud orchestration. The communications infrastructure should not be the bottleneck of our business. Speed of communication is a key factor in determining the speed and opportunity of our business. We need to make contact with our colleagues and business partners quickly, checking their availability even without phone numbers. To solve this problem, we decided to revamp our communications platform, adding IM/presence and a scheduler."

Arcstar Universal One supports a new common platform

Murata selected NTT Communications (NTT Com) as its partner, adopting NTT Com Arcstar UCaaS, Cisco WebEx®, and Arcstar Universal One for its new communications platform. Cisco Jabber® works as a portal linking the Arcstar UcaaS (Cloud PBX) and the Cisco WebEx (web confrencing service).

The new communications platform gives employees the same interface from anywhere in the world. Mr. Sakamori reflected on the choice. "Simply building a network and a platform was not the goal. What we can achieve with the platform was important. We selected NTT Com because of their high-quality services, their ability to deliver services globally, their extensive lineup of services, and our expectation for their capability to find the best solution, even beyond their own services."

Construction of Murata's new network in China, ASEAN, Europe, and the US took 2 years, with over 100 lines switched to Arcstar Universal One. Masatsugu Kawakado, senior specialist in the Information Technology Planning Department described the migration process. "We found difficulties in procurement and installation scheduling for non-stop factories, as well as for sites with large time zone differences. However, working with NTT Com, we successfully completed the changeover."

Web conferencing and chat tools are now fully operational, with voice call connections complete for sites in Japan and in-progress for China and ASEAN sites.

High QoS and accurate assessment, Active collaborations for business agility

Mr. Sakamori described the results. "We can now visualize the network status anywhere on the globe. If a problem occurs, we can identify it immediately. The platform enables us to quickly see the infrastructure level and capabilities in each region."

Simple network configuration and high-quality service have provided stable performance at the application layer, delivering consistent good quality audio for Arcstar UCaaS and web conferencing. Arcstar UCaaS and Cisco WebEx have around 20,000 userids each, allowing employees to connect quickly from anywhere.

Murata holds 18,000 web conferences a month, both within the company and with external partners. Online conferences benefit partners in distant places. They also benefit colleagues in the same office. Anywhere and anytime paperless meetings have lead to faster collaborative decision-making. Murata top management appreciates the increased efficiency of global communications.

Mr. Sakamori described his future plans. "We have standardized and optimized our communications platform. Next, we would like to utilize the platform more effectively to accelerate our business. We are considering the adoption of new services. For example, Murata employees are increasingly demanding access to video streaming and to big data analysis. Customer satisfaction (CS) and employee satisfaction (ES) are also very important goals. The communications infrastructure is an essential element in satisfying these goals, and we look forward to comprehensive support from NTT Com as we work to grow together with our partners."