Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) > Case Studies > Accelerating Software Development for Large-Scale Real-Time Systems at Mitsubishi Electric’s Kamakura Works

Accelerating Software Development for Large-Scale Real-Time Systems at Mitsubishi Electric’s Kamakura Works

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Virtual & Augmented Reality Software
Wearables - Augmented Reality Glasses, Headsets & Controllers

Applicable Industries

Automotive
Cement

Applicable Functions

Maintenance
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Intelligent Packaging
Mixed Reality

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
Testing & Certification

The Customer

Mitsubishi Electric’s Kamakura

About The Customer

Mitsubishi Electric is a global leader in the manufacture of electrical and electronic equipment, including air-conditioning systems, home products, and automotive parts. Based in Tokyo, the company also builds large-scale real-time and embedded systems for public sector clients at its production hub, Kamakura Works, located in the Japanese prefecture of Kanagawa. Kamakura Works has been at the forefront of Japan’s development of space technology since the country first launched an ionized layer observatory satellite in 1976. In February 2020, the hub significantly expanded its capacity to develop satellites after building one of Japan’s largest satellite production facilities.

The Challenge

Mitsubishi Electric, a leading manufacturer of electrical and electronic equipment, was facing challenges in its software development processes for large-scale real-time systems at its Kamakura Works production hub. The software engineering department was tasked with developing software solutions for complex systems such as satellites and ground control centers. However, these solutions were becoming larger and more complex, and the development lead time was getting shorter. The department was working to refine and systematize its processes for developing various types of software solutions. They were also preparing for a further increase in the speed and scale of future software development. The department aimed to cope with the growing sophistication and speed of software development by promoting automation, flexibly meet the demands of the most complex pipeline projects, and realize a secure on-premises environment that was not connected to the Internet.

The Solution

In late 2018, Kamakura Works’ software engineering department began discussions with HPE Pointnext Services on how to best drive innovation. HPE Pointnext Services helped design a road map to achieve these objectives while understanding the software engineering department’s challenges and needs. The software engineering department chose Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine to build CI/CD pipelines. This Kubernetes distribution is an industry standard in container orchestration and has been commercialized for enterprise use. The software engineering department’s original CI/CD pipelines comprised OpenShift and OSS such as Jenkins for automation, GitLab for deliverables management, RedMine for task management, and Rocket.Chat for communication. The new setup allowed the department to arrange all the execution environments needed for the integration testing of application software and applications that needed to be tested by just deploying container images managed by OpenShift.

Operational Impact

The implementation of the CI/CD pipelines has resulted in a secure on-premises environment that isn’t connected to the Internet. The project completed the construction of the CI/CD pipelines in just four months. The portability and reproducibility of container images offer diverse benefits—from the scalability of development environments to the ability to reproduce environments used in the past. The automation of routine processes has freed up skilled personnel from routine work such as environment construction and testing so they can focus on higher-impact tasks. The department is now able to improve the entire software engineering department’s productivity even more.

Quantitative Benefit

Speeds up testing by using container orchestration from Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine
Cuts the number of processes needed to deploy and integrate testing of built applications by up to 50%
Enables the rapid relocation and reproduction of test environments of the same quality using container images