Case Study: Trusco Nakayama achieves faster, more reliable inventory management and customer service with IBM

Transforms inventory management to delight customers with fast, reliable service

Trusco Nakayama, a leading Japanese wholesaler that handles 2.3 million products and serves thousands of suppliers and retailers, faced the challenge of guaranteeing fast, reliable 24/7 delivery, improving regional stocking to support direct deliveries, and replacing expiring SAP ECC support while reducing manual processes. To meet these goals, Trusco Nakayama partnered with IBM to modernize its core systems, moving mission‑critical applications to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud and adding IBM Cloud, IBM Services and IBM Watson capabilities.

IBM implemented the SAP S/4HANA migration and built cloud applications, cognitive search and a chatbot (TRUSCO AI Orange Rescue) plus an AI pricing engine to automate quoting and inventory workflows. The IBM solution automated more than 50,000 quote requests daily, helped enable stocking toward 500,000 items, improved order-response rates and inventory hit performance (around 90.5%), and delivered faster decision making, greater operational efficiency and stronger external collaboration.

Trusco Nakayama

Atsushi Kazumi

Chief Information Officer, Chief Digital Officer