Can Craftsmanship Be Passed On Through AI?

DENSO has hundreds of plants and facilities in Japan and around the world, and each of them has accumulated what could be called "movements only that person can do," cultivated over many years of experience. The automotive industry has pushed hard for production efficiency and automation, yet hands-on monozukuri (manufacturing excellence) remains deeply rooted.

What's more, each site makes different products, so their processes and know-how naturally differ, too. Knowledge built up at one site isn't necessarily shared with others. Departments across the company are working on standardization and information sharing, but because the differences between sites are so large, "sharing expert skills" remains structurally difficult.

Yoshioka, who belongs to the Design Div., first confronted this challenge through "encounters outside the company." He loves visiting places where things are made, and as he talked with craftspeople around the country, his concern about the transfer of skills grew.

"Partly because I studied at an art university, I loved traveling to different places and experiencing cultural monozukuri and handcrafts. As I talked with craftspeople, I began hearing the same thing everywhere: their skills weren't being passed on to the next generation."
(Yoshioka)

That feeling deepened when he met the craftspeople of Arimatsu shibori, a traditional tie-dyeing craft practiced in Nagoya. Across Japan's traditional crafts, artisans are aging. Many of the craftspeople Yoshioka met were in their 70s to 90s. All too often, skills and knowledge passed down by word of mouth are lost without ever being recorded or inherited. For Yoshioka, these skills are more than mere technique.

"You could see a skill as a compressed form of a person's experience and senses—or, to go further, of their entire life. Those skills and senses are disappearing without being passed on across generations. I feel this is a challenge shared not only by monozukuri, but by many other fields as well."
(Yoshioka)

Through repeated conversations with craftspeople, Yoshioka arrived at a realization. Hands-on monozukuri still survives throughout the automotive industry. Weren't the succession problems facing traditional crafts and the skills transfer challenges at DENSO's manufacturing sites fundamentally the same?

In that moment, the problem he had glimpsed outside the company came into focus as one inside it, too. From this realization came TECHNO GRAPHICAL DATA ARCHIVE (*) (hereafter, the Human Skills Archive). The project involves visiting workshops along the old Tokaido road and digitizing skills and handwork passed down orally—using three-dimensional viewpoint data and motion scanning—to record those techniques and that knowledge.

What began as exploration outside the company connected with skills transfer efforts already underway inside DENSO, becoming a first step toward sharing the skills accumulated at each site.

* TECHNO GRAPHICAL DATA ARCHIVE (THE HUMAN SKILLS ARCHIVE) GREW OUT OF A COLLABORATIVE PROJECT WITH LOFTWORK / FABCAFE TOKYO THAT BEGAN IN 2023.

• TECHNO GRAPHICAL DATA ARCHIVE

Yoshioka says there are two directions for passing on skills. One is "from person to person." The other is "from person to machine."

He came to believe that these two directions could be connected through the lens of "Physical AI"—AI that learns through interaction with the physical world.

"We're converting the skills and knowledge people have gained through experience, together with the judgments they make in different situations, into a form that AI can learn from. It's not simply about turning an expert's intuition into data. It's about capturing and conveying the accumulated judgment behind it—the reasoning behind why things are done a certain way."
(Yoshioka)

Specifically, the team captured experts' skills as digital data and built prototype software that reproduces work processes in a physics simulator on a computer. It allows them to compare and verify the differences and ingenuity in each expert's work, and to visualize the reasoning behind judgments that until now depended on individuals. Yoshioka also shared what he sees beyond that.

"We combine digitized expert skills with AI. That might reveal skills we've never seen before. With Arimatsu shibori, starting from the experience and senses the craftspeople have cultivated, we could test a wide range of conditions digitally and potentially explore new patterns and new combinations of techniques. These possibilities aren't purely speculative—they're grounded in data we've actually captured. When digital and analog monozukuri coexist, and cutting-edge technology combines with expert skill, a new kind of monozukuri is born. If I can do that kind of innovative work, I'd find it fascinating, and I believe it can lead to delivering meaningful value."
(Yoshioka)

The goal of this initiative is not to replace craftspeople's techniques with AI. It is, above all, to carry human skills to the next generation.

"When new technology and old technology come together, a cycle to the next generation begins. If we can achieve that, it should also be a way of giving back to the craftspeople who cooperated with us. And ultimately, it should become possible not only in traditional crafts, but in other monozukuri settings, too."
(Yoshioka)

At first glance, skills transfer and Physical AI look like engineering-heavy themes. But Yoshioka, a member of the Design Department, approaches them through "design and art."

"I see design as solving problems while putting things in order. Art, I think, is about posing questions the world hasn't asked yet and introducing a new way of seeing things."
(Yoshioka)

Yoshioka adds that in the organizations of the future, it will become increasingly important to re-examine "what we have built up so far." For example, when a factory works to raise the efficiency of mass production, a question tends to get overlooked: "Is every bit of individuality and person-dependence really unnecessary?" Yet that is exactly the question worth stopping to consider.

The Human Skills Archive was born from that very question. Could there be untold value in the expert techniques being lost in the pursuit of efficiency?

What happens when we apply these perspectives to "what we have built up so far" across DENSO as a whole? DENSO has technologies and skills accumulated over more than 75 years—what Yoshioka calls "excellent raw materials." To make the most of their potential, the ability to solve the problems in front of us isn't enough. We also need the ability to ask, "Could there be value no one has noticed yet?" In that sense, this is an area where design and art can contribute.

Yoshioka asked himself, "As one employee, what can I do to make the most of the ways of thinking and experiences I've built up, and contribute?" His answer: to show the company that he would contribute not only through design but also through the power of art, he deliberately began calling himself an "in-house artist" within DENSO.

"How can I connect the areas I want to commit to with the company's business, and move my own work and the company's goals forward together? That's what I keep asking myself. And of course it's not just me—I feel DENSO has a place where people who've built experience in creative contexts like design and art can thrive."
(Yoshioka)

The Human Skills Archive isn't only about preserving skills as records. Its other purpose is to put those recorded skills to use and connect them to the next act of creation.

"Through this activity, interest in technologies and skills grows, and the thinking behind them is passed on to the next generation. I believe that kind of steady accumulation leads to monozukuri that delights our customers."
(Yoshioka)

That requires people who can bridge design, art, engineering, and science, and connect what each field knows. But Yoshioka is also aware of the reality that people with such knowledge are not being fully utilized in society.

"Some people who studied design or art struggle to find places where they can make full use of their experience and perspectives. Why can't the experience they've built up be fully put to use in society? Personally, I've felt that difficulty. That's exactly why I see it as one of my roles to communicate that companies need people with that kind of experience in order to innovate."
(Yoshioka)

That practice is already sparking new movement inside the company.

"Recently, other members of the Design Department became interested in my activities and started projects of their own. Can we take problems we discover outside the company, bring them inside, and turn them into a 'wave' across all of our business activities? Then the value created flows back out into society, a cycle forms, and eventually grows into new business five or ten years from now. That's my ideal."
(Yoshioka)

An activity that began with one person's sense that something wasn't right led to an encounter with the craftspeople of Arimatsu shibori, connected with the skills transfer challenges facing DENSO's manufacturing sites, and grew into the theme of Physical AI. And Yoshioka's journey is now inspiring other employees to set out on their own, guided by their own interests.

An individual's question grows into new value for the company. Beyond this exploration, too, the future of DENSO's monozukuri continues.