"SHUGI," a Platform for Turning Craft Skills into Assets, Certified under the Osaka Top Runner Program for FY2026 (2nd round)

About the Osaka Top Runner Program

The program is a City of Osaka certification scheme for promising projects at companies working to commercialize products and services that can create new demand. Coordinators accompany each project from market entry through to expanding sales channels, providing tailored, continuous hands-on support, with the aim of helping create the companies that will represent Osaka in the future.

The City of Osaka grants the certification, the Osaka Business Development Agency runs the program, and support is provided in partnership with Kansai Mirai Bank. In this round, five projects — including ours — were certified from more than 70 entries.

Sources: Osaka Top Runner Program official site (in Japanese) / Osaka Business Development Agency press release, September 15, 2026 (in Japanese)

About SHUGI

When a skilled craftsperson retires, their craft — the instinct and movement learned through the body — risks being lost, because manuals and videos alone cannot convey it.

SHUGI uses smart glasses, XR and AI to record and structure the skills of experienced workers as data, so they can be passed to the next generation. An expert simply wears the smart glasses and works as usual; their hand movements, field of view and speech are recorded as skill data and accumulated as an organizational asset. Learners can study while watching the expert's view and movements synchronized in real time through their own smart glasses, and remote instruction from another location is also supported.

A distinctive feature is AI-based "synchronization rate" analysis — our own measure of how closely a learner's movements match the expert's — which puts a number on progress that until now could only be judged by watching.

In a trial with 30 people over seven months, skill acquisition was three times faster and instruction time was reduced by 80% compared with conventional on-the-job training. Research results including this trial have been published as peer-reviewed international conference papers (ADC 2025 and 2026).

Passing water infrastructure skills to the next generation — working with Soo City, Kagoshima

Alongside manufacturing and traditional crafts, in public infrastructure we are working with Soo City, Kagoshima Prefecture on "SHUGI for Type Soo Mine (TSM)." Across Japan's water utilities, the retirement of veteran engineers and a shortage of staff have made it a nationwide problem to pass on the field skills that have supported the inspection and maintenance of pipes and facilities.

Built on SHUGI, TSM lets veteran engineers support water and sewerage fieldwork remotely and in real time through smart glasses, while recording and sharing on-site judgement and procedures for whoever takes over next.

Related: Digital Gyosei, July 2026 (in Japanese)

Research, development and testing in one place — the UAI facility in Izumi, Osaka

We own USEYA ADVANCED INDUSTRY (UAI), a facility in Izumi, Osaka, that serves as a lab where research, development and verification can all be carried out in one place. Between April and December 2025, UAI received more than 50 site visits and some 2,000 visitors in total.

The certification and what comes next

With this certification, we will receive hands-on support from a specialist coordinator for one year from October 2026 to accelerate our growth. Starting with the commercial launch of SHUGI planned for November 2026, we will expand into manufacturing, local government and vocational training, and pursue partnerships with machine tool and industrial machinery manufacturers and engineering firms to offer equipment and the skills to operate it as a package.

A certification ceremony was scheduled for Friday, September 25 at Osaka City Central Public Hall, where we also planned to present our business.

Keeping the master's craft, for good. From Osaka to the world. We remain fully committed to building a new standard for passing craft skills on.

Media coverage

Our work was scheduled to be featured on TV Tokyo's "News Morning Satellite" on Friday, September 18, 2026.

Broadcast dates and content are subject to change.

Related links

• From Water Utilities to Veterinary Medicine — TSM Expands into Veterinary Care (November 1, 2026)
• 日本語版のプレスリリース