Idemitsu Expands Partnership with Enthought to Accelerate Product Innovation using Materials Informatics

Idemitsu Expands Partnership with Enthought to Accelerate Product Innovation using Materials Informatics

Expansion will Advance Idemitsu’s Ambitious Digital Transformation and Lithium Battery Material Department Goals

Tokyo, Japan – November 13, 2024 – Enthought, a company that specializes in digital transformation of science-driven companies, today announced that integrated energy company Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. (Idemitsu) has expanded their partnership in support of their vision to scale the development and manufacturing of innovative battery materials. The growing partnership will include new strategic technical consulting and implementation services in addition to renewed participation in Enthought’s unique Materials Informatics (MI) Acceleration Program for internal teams. The expansion and renewal highlights Idemitsu’s commitment to accelerate product research and development (R&D) through materials informatics, process informatics, and digital transformation (DX) in one of their new innovation-driven businesses that is helping realize a carbon-neutral future. 

Idemitsu is leading Japan in its transformation from becoming a top petroleum refiner to the number one energy materials company. As part of the company’s 2030 goals toward carbon neutrality, Idemitsu will commercialize solid electrolytes (SEs) to produce all-solid-state batteries to revolutionize transportation. As it runs the last leg of the race to mass-production and commercialization, Idemitsu invested in digitalization and partnered with Enthought in 2023 to accelerate their materials and process development efforts and to provide the insights needed to scale up rapidly. 

“Enthought brings deep expertise in both materials science and digital technologies and works closely with our researchers and engineers to build scientific software solutions that solve extremely challenging problems,” said Hiroshi Mizuno, Ph.D., General Manager in the Innovation Strategy Department at Idemitsu. “This expertise, combined with their highly effective Discovery and Agile development methods, has produced software solutions at a quality and effectiveness level that is unparalleled. For these reasons and more, we have decided to expand our partnership with Enthought as we strive to achieve our ambitious business goals.”  

Digital transformation has been integral to Idemitsu’s short-term business growth goals of creating new value for its customers and improving in-house productivity by 30%, but it is also a key driver of their longer-term goals to create new advanced materials businesses and product lines that allow them to reach carbon neutrality. Materials informatics—the modern approach to materials discovery and product development combining materials science, data science, and scientific computing—is instrumental to achieving these goals. Making DX and MI work constitutes setting up new digital infrastructure and tools, establishing new ways of working across the organization, as well as executing a comprehensive plan for digital upskilling. As a result of these efforts, the company has earned the DX certification from Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2021 and 2023. 

“Appropriately applied materials informatics technologies can truly transform labs and business units, and we are now seeing that play out at Idemitsu. It has been an honor to support and help accelerate their R&D digital transformation progress over the last three years. We are grateful to have earned Idemitsu’s trust and look forward to continuing the partnership for years to come,” said Mike Heiber, Ph.D., Director, Professional Services & Customer Success, Materials Informatics at Enthought. “And as someone concerned about sustainability myself, I am very pleased that we can apply our MI expertise to help electrify transportation and help Idemitsu reach their carbon neutrality goals.”

For more information about Enthought’s approach to digital transformation, please visit https://www.enthought.com/digital-transformation/.  

About Enthought

Enthought powers digital transformation for science. We partner with companies worldwide to solve complex data challenges unique to enterprise scientific R&D. Our extensive expertise in  advanced AI/ML techniques and scientific data enable faster discovery and continuous innovation. Enthought is headquartered in Austin, Texas; with operations in Tokyo, Japan; Cambridge, United Kingdom; and Zürich, Switzerland. For more information, explore enthought.com and follow on LinkedIn.  

About Idemitsu Kosan

The Idemitsu Group is engaged in the development, manufacture, and sales of a wide variety of energy sources and materials in the areas of Petroleum, Basic Chemicals, High-Performance Materials, Power/Renewable Energy, and Resources based on relationships of trust with partners and customers in a variety of fields. To achieve carbon neutrality and a circular society by 2050, we aim to develop the three business areas of “Energy One-Step Ahead,” “Diverse Resource Conservation/Circulation Solutions,” and “Smart Yorozuya” and continue to take on new challenges using our domestic and international networks.

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