2018.08.08

NIPPON Car Solutions and NTT COMWARE to Develop the Car Leasing Industry's First AI-based Automatic Checking System to Process Complicated Car Maintenance Billing Slips
-Accurate and prompt checking of the huge amount of car maintenance' billing slips will be realized by the AI-based automation system-

August 8, 2018, Tokyo---Nippon Car Solutions Co., Ltd. (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, President: Makoto Nogami hereinafter, NCS) and NTT COMWARE CORPORATION (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President: Satoshi Kurishima, hereinafter, NTT COMWARE) announce the successful results of the technical verifications of their AI-based technology to check complicated billing slips of car maintenance shops.

This technology is expected to be applied to the process to handle over one million billing slips issued per year, which are currently manually processed, through prompt and accurate checking, quick payment to car maintenance shops and the reduction in workload to check the bills.

NCS provides car maintenance services including car inspection/checkup/maintenance to corporate and individual customers of their car leasing services. Accordingly, over one million car maintenance bills are issued by partner car maintenance shops nationwide. With the diversity of vehicles, car maintenance bills are also becoming more complicated due to the difference of various maintenance service items, the working time required, the differing parts required for each vehicle and the service staff with specific high skills who are required to check the bills.

As the automobile industry expects further innovation of the technologies and an increase in the number of vehicles on lease, which would produce a huge amount of bills for maintenance services, they expect to use AI as a solution to substitute the tasks to ensure an accurate and quick checking process of the bills. Under the circumstances, NCS and NTT COMWARE are collaboratively carrying out technical verifications using 'AI to check car maintenance bills' using a huge volume of past data.
This technical verification includes data mining on past data and check logs, developing the know-how patterns of the staff and deep learning of AI for the frequent patterns of the bills to review how the technology is effective at a level that is equivalent to the staff. The results show that AI is highly reproducible and sufficient to replace the checkers. The development of the systems continues with the cooperation between the two companies accordingly.

NCS and NTT COMWARE aim for the practical use of 'AI to check car maintenance bills', starting from the area in which the AI-based system shows highly precise results through reviews and verifications of the system to be substituted. NCS is proactively promoting the application of advanced technologies such as the AI-based automatic detection of dangerous driving from the images of drive recorders and IoT technology by NCS Drive Doctor. They will continue to evolve as a car services company to realize customer safety and security as well as a comfortable business environment for our stakeholders through the use of advanced technologies. NTT COMWARE aims to improve productivity and create new value for customers as their business partner through developments in similar businesses as well as through collaborations with other industries such as insurance and banking.

A patent of the business model of 'AI to Check Car Maintenance Bills' as a business-related invention is currently being applied for.

Note to Editors
In 1987, NCS was established as NTT Auto Lease Co., Ltd and merged with Century Auto Lease Co., Ltd. in 2005 when the company name was changed to the current name as NIPPON Car Solutions Co., Ltd. In 2013, NCS merged with Tokyo Auto Lease Co., Ltd. and became a consolidated subsidiary of Tokyo Century Co., Ltd. NCS is an professional auto service company with extensive experience and excellent performance in the vehicle management business. Its main business includes the leasing business of various vehicles and the consignment maintenance business of various vehicles and an insurance agency. It has branches and sales outlets nationwide from Hokkaido to the Kyushu and Okinawan regions and offers total services related to vehicles to the customers.

NTT COMWARE has long utilized ICT systems to support Japan's communications infrastructure while it operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As an expert group providing a safe and secure infrastructure to society, NTT COMWARE has continued to innovate, taking pride in the fact that NTT COMWARE is an organization in which each employee is a professional. As a true business partner of its customers, NTT COMWARE utilizes its accumulated technology, experience, and quality to support the business of those customers. Furthermore, by spurring digital innovation via customer collaboration, NTT COMWARE also endeavors to contribute to the creation of new business.



[Business model of "AI to Check Car Maintenance Bills"]

• AI learns the pattern to check the bills
• Add-on AI to the bill registration system used by car maintenance shops to register maintenance request slips
• Using AI to check the car maintenance bills and provide quick feedback to the car maintenance shops
• AI continues to learn the checking patterns and expand the capability to conduct the tasks instead of the staff