Hitachi Digital Services – an established IT/OT integration expert with a strong heritage and growing ambitions

There are only a handful of global players with a strong heritage in IT and OT. Hitachi is definitely one of them. The industrial giant has been active in the IT space for over 60 years and has been present in the OT world for over 110 years. Today, out of 270,000 Hitachi employees across 70+ countries, more than 100,000 bring digital capabilities to the table. This illustrates well how relevant digital capabilities have become in optimizing the OT world.

For years, Hitachi Digital Services (HDS) has supported customer projects at the crossroads of IT, OT, and AI. As HDS has extensive experience in this space, PAC discussed the current status of customer engagements with the HDS team. Our aim was to understand how leading companies take IT/OT integration to the next level today.

Companies have to consider the concept of IT/OT integration from multiple angles

IT/OT integration is fundamentally about connecting operational and enterprise systems to drive end-to-end business outcomes. To structure the topic discussed here, PAC distinguishes between four different forms of IT/OT integration:

• Bringing OT data into the IT world for further processing. A typical use case is company-wide transparency in OT activities via the cloud.
• Putting new, innovative IT tools into the hands of OT teams. This includes new technologies like AI, augmented reality (AR), and digital twin simulations.
• Improving the collaboration between IT and OT teams. This ranges from more frequent exchanges between these teams to totally integrated teams.
• Building integrated systems across IT and OT with combined compute capabilities in the cloud and at the edge. AI is a good example in this context – the training of new AI models typically takes place in the cloud, while inference runs at the edge to avoid latency issues.

Companies have to be aware of the different aspects of the concept and take them into account to optimize the outcome of their IT/OT integration projects.

Hitachi Rail automates quality inspections and enhances transparency to optimize operational efficiency

Hitachi Rail’s new digital factory in the US (Maryland) delivers railcars to customers in North America. The factory officially started operations in September 2025. It is centered around a digital core to maximize transparency within the factory and support deeper digital integration in the company. This lays the foundations for driving operational efficiency and quality improvements. To unlock this, HDS implemented digital technologies like IoT sensors, cameras, and AI in the factory to enable real-time supply chain and manufacturing monitoring and provide deep transparency in production quality. In addition, Hitachi’s Automated Quality Inspection (AQI) solution takes operational efficiency to a new level. It combines the robot dog Spot from Boston Dynamics with AI-based computer vision for visual inspection tours. This enables defects on trains to be detected with precision and in a fully automated way. The resulting improvements were significant: 90% time reduction in the overall product quality inspection process for finished vehicles and more than 50% reduction in manual inspection hours. To bring OT-related data from the shop floor into IT systems, the company integrated various SAP solutions, e.g., SAP MES and SAP EWM (Enterprise Warehouse Management). On top of this, Hitachi uses a new ESG tool called RitaONE. RitaONE is an agent-based system that operates on top of collected ESG data from various sources, such as the factory. It enables users to interact with this data via chat interface, get expert advice on ESG, and create automated ESG reports.

Global automotive OEM implements an integrated IT/OT system to enable real-time decision-making

Another example in the digital factory context is related to building tightly integrated systems across IT and OT. HDS helped a global automotive manufacturer move away from 400+ legacy apps and outdated OT infrastructure by modernizing its production system across factories. This required the integration and migration of digital systems in the cloud (e.g., big data analytics in AWS and Azure) and at the factory edge (e.g., Rockwell FactoryTalk and Ignition from Inductive Automation). An integrated IT/OT system was crucial in this case to enable faster decision-making on the shop floor. The integrated system forms the foundation for near-real-time data processing.

Major consumer goods manufacturer makes its operators smart with AR assistance

The final example we would like to highlight is related to putting new, innovative IT tools into the hands of operators. A leading global consumer goods manufacturer uses AR and machine learning (ML) to optimize the efficiency of factory workers. The company faced the persistent challenge of ensuring that required changeovers in its packaging lines did not lead to unnecessary downtimes due to complex standard operating procedures (SOPs) and new workers. Frequent changes in the factory’s workforce meant that training often failed to address the issue. To deal with this, the idea was to simplify the execution of SOPs by ensuring that even new workers were able to execute the process independently with AR assistance. ML models provide instant validation and feedback for step completion through visual confirmation. This helped the company reduce changeover times, increase machine uptimes, and reduce training efforts.

HDS becomes an IT/OT/ET integrator, empowered by AI

The examples above underline the value HDS can provide to customers. The company delivers projects worldwide and across all relevant areas of IT/OT integration. HDS’s mission to bridge the worlds of IT and OT is more relevant than ever. We need tightly integrated IT and OT systems and the ability to holistically optimize them with AI capabilities. The journey does not stop there, though. HDS continues to expand its scope in the engineering space. This means HDS will be an increasingly relevant player in the entire field of ET (engineering technology). In our view, overcoming data silos across IT, OT, and ET and establishing integrated and AI-advanced workflows across these areas will be the next chapter in unlocking operational excellence, innovation leadership, and customer centricity. Vendors like HDS are essential in doing the “heavy lifting” of the related integration work.