On November 20, S-Mat announced that MARUWA SHOMEI had published a case study in which they achieved an inventory cost reduction of approximately 3 million yen (approximately 15%) over six months for about 200 items by utilizing the inventory optimization AI agent of their IoT inventory management service, "SmartMat Cloud."
<Inventory cost reduced by approximately 300 million yen in six months>
By utilizing AI for inventory optimization, we are optimizing inventory levels while maintaining zero stockouts, thereby creating a "system that doesn't rely on human intervention."
The "Inventory Optimization AI Agent" is a new feature added to "SmartMat Cloud," an IoT inventory management service provided by S-Mat. A beta version was released in June 2025, and the official version was launched in November of the same year.
The system uses AI to learn inventory usage trends and time-series patterns measured by IoT scales, automatically detecting stockout risks and opportunities for inventory reduction. By continuously providing timely, proactive suggestions to the field, it supports inventory optimization.
After implementation, the AI inventory optimization agent reduced inventory costs for approximately 200 items by about 300 million yen (about 15%) in six months. Inventory management workload was reduced by 50-60%, and shelf space was organized and utilized more efficiently. This made it possible to maintain zero stockouts and zero delivery delays.
At the company's Toki factory, handling hundreds of different component items resulted in enormous labor costs for inventory management and stock counting, leading to inefficiencies and inconsistencies in inventory accuracy. This resulted in component shortages, disruption of production plans, overtime, and urgent requests to suppliers. In public projects, budgets are fixed and deadlines cannot be extended, making on-time delivery essential. Therefore, even a slight delay posed a constant risk of major problems.
To address these challenges and "build a system that doesn't rely on human intervention through automated inventory management and ordering," the company introduced the IoT inventory management service "SmartMat Cloud." Currently, they are using 661 SmartMat units to achieve automated inventory measurement and ordering.
