Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Integration of Mainframe and SAP with GeneXus.
Mitsubish Heavy Industries (MHI) was founded in 1884 and currently has more than 30,000 employees, 8 operating bases, 6 researches and development centers and 14 factories all around the world. In 2003, when GeneXus arrived in Japan, Mr Kenji Katsumata, Engineering Manager in Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, started using this tool to integrate the SAP system with the Mainframe and gained not only productivity but also in reduced costs.

The vice-director, Kyoji Noda, responsible for developing applications in Mainframe system in Yokohama Engineering Center and part of the staff who started with GeneXus in 2003, explains that his company has chosen GeneXus for three reasons: there were few engineers with knowledge in Mainframe; the expenses to update the technology were high; and there were difficulties to develop new technologies. He says that “it is easy to learn how to use GeneXus.It provides high development productivity, it is easy to maintain and it does not downgrade, since GeneXus evolves along with the technology”.

Noda explains that the prototypes are created during the data analyses stage and that the operations in Database Management System (DBMS) are almost unnecessary. Besides, the encoding is simple and therefore, maintenance, reception and problem solving are easy. He also states that “for MHI, one of the main advantages of GeneXus was the ease in which the Mainframe system engineers were able to change the web system.”

GeneXus is also used to intermediate SAP system and web applications. “It is possible to do the development through the SAP system using the GeneXus. It is much more effective and efficient. The productivity is much higher using GeneXus. Without this tool, it would have been much more costly and we would have taken 100 to 200 hours more to finish. We were able to develop the applications in less time and at a lower cost”.