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The Japan program of the ARC Asia Forum 2026, held in Tokyo this month, concluded successfully. More than 250 participants attended the forum and actively engaged with a wide range of compelling presentations and discussions.
ARC Asia Forum 2026, Japan
Keynote Sessions
The keynote sessions featured presentations by JFE Steel and Mitsubishi Chemical. Both companies introduced their company-wide initiatives to promote citizen development as part of their internal deployment of digital transformation (DX) and AI technologies, along with related employee education programs.
JFE Steel presented its talent development framework, centered on programs designed to cultivate business innovators, data scientists, and digital designers who can lead DX initiatives. The presentation also highlighted how classifying citizen developers according to their level of maturity and holding achievement presentation events attended by the company president have contributed to employee motivation and helped energize DX education across the organization.
At the forum two years ago, Mitsubishi Chemical reported on the early stages of its citizen development initiative. This year, the company demonstrated that the initiative had developed into a company-wide effort, with the goal of helping all employees become digitally capable professionals.
General Sessions
The general sessions introduced the latest technology trends, cutting-edge solutions offered by manufacturers, and related case studies.
The OPC Foundation presented standardization trends and use cases for data integration centered on OPC UA. In particular, the presentation introduced Manufacturing-X and Factory-X, which are being standardized in the German automotive industry as initiatives intended to address fragmented machine-to-machine communication.
The presentation emphasized that data integration is not limited to the communication of process data. It also includes machine information, enabling capabilities such as sensor plug-and-play through a broader data integration platform.
Idemitsu Kosan introduced its adoption of the Cognite Data Fusion data integration platform to digitize and centrally manage operational and maintenance data, along with the knowledge accumulated at its refineries and business sites. The company also described how the platform helps reduce the time required to collect and analyze information while supporting more sophisticated decision-making through predictive capabilities and earlier awareness of potential issues.
Octave, COPA-DATA, Red Hat, SUPCON, and Yokogawa Electric each presented their latest solutions and success stories. The companies also hosted tabletop demonstration booths, where representatives answered questions from attendees and participated in wide-ranging discussions.
Panel Discussion
After the presentations, the forum featured its customary panel discussion, co-sponsored by SICE, the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers.
Panel Discussion
Moderated by Professor Kurahashi of the University of Tsukuba, the panel brought together the president of SICE; two speakers from JFE Steel and Mitsubishi Chemical, representing the user perspective; and the president of Yokogawa Digital, representing the manufacturer and system integrator perspective.
The discussion proceeded in a question-and-answer format with the audience. As expected, industrial AI attracted considerable interest. In particular, physical AI appeared poised to gain significant momentum in Japan.
The panelists engaged in a lively discussion about how physical AI could be embedded not only in robots and humanoids but also across entire plants and factories.
The discussion brought the ARC Japan Forum, widely recognized as a high-quality one-day event in Japan’s automation sector, to a successful close.