Insider Brief
- Hitachi and Fanuc formed a strategic partnership to develop and commercialize physical AI systems for manufacturing, with Hitachi factories serving as initial test sites before broader deployment beginning in fiscal 2027.
- The companies will combine Hitachi’s physical AI, manufacturing and operational technology with Fanuc’s industrial robots, control systems and robotics AI to automate tasks that still depend heavily on skilled workers.
- Initial testing in Japan’s Ibaraki region will cover applications including parts picking and production changeovers, with future deployment planned across industries such as semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, automotive, logistics, food and shipbuilding.
Hitachi and Fanuc have formed a strategic partnership to develop and commercialize physical AI systems for manufacturing, combining Hitachi’s AI technology with Fanuc’s industrial robots and testing the systems first inside Hitachi factories.
According to the companies, Hitachi manufacturing sites will serve as “Customer Zero,” allowing the systems to learn from real production data and operating conditions before being offered more broadly. Commercial deployments are expected to begin in fiscal 2027.
“By applying the outcomes gained through our Customer Zero initiatives and providing customers with integrated support from on-site physical AI implementation through operation and continuous improvement, we will contribute to improving productivity and quality across manufacturing operations and addressing social challenges such as labor shortages,” noted Hitachi president and CEO Toshiaki Tokunaga.
The partnership will combine Hitachi’s physical AI models, including technology associated with HMAX Industry, with Fanuc’s robotics, control and AI capabilities. The companies said the goal is to develop systems that can handle changing production conditions and tasks that still require human judgment and adaptability.
“Today, the practical deployment of Physical AI, where AI perceives, reasons about, and acts in the physical world through robots and machines, is becoming a reality across various industries,” added Fanuc president and CEO Kenji Yamaguchi.
The Partnership
The companies said they are collaborating in order to increase the automation of work that remains dependent on skilled labor and to transfer production knowledge into more autonomous systems. Hitachi said it will contribute its manufacturing, operational technology and AI expertise, while Fanuc will provide its industrial robots, control systems and robotics AI technology.
Initial validation will take place at Hitachi manufacturing facilities in Japan’s Ibaraki region. Early applications will include picking parts with different shapes and handling production changeovers when factories switch between products.
Hitachi and Fanuc plan to evaluate several measures during testing, including recognition accuracy, robot motion, takt time and manufacturing quality. Takt time refers to the amount of time allocated to produce a product or complete a task. The companies will also test the use of Hitachi’s edge AI semiconductor with Fanuc industrial robots.
The systems are expected to continuously learn from factory data rather than depend only on imitation learning or simulated digital-twin environments and Hitachi and Fanuc said that approach could allow robots to adjust more effectively to site-specific rules and changing conditions on production lines.
The jobs the systems will be designed to take on include parts handling, machine loading, machining, assembly, production changeovers and material transfer between processes. Many of those jobs still rely on workers to respond to variations in parts and production conditions.
Beginning in fiscal 2027, Hitachi and Fanuc plan to use their global customer bases to deploy the technology across industries that include semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, advanced materials, automotive, logistics, food, shipbuilding and agriculture.
