Kong Supports Tsuneishi Shipbuilding's Core System Modernization via AI-Driven Development

Kong Inc. announced that Tsuneishi Shipbuilding has selected "Kong Konnect" as its API and microservices infrastructure for its procurement system modernization project. Rather than simply replacing the existing legacy core system, the project aims to organize systems and data by business domain, building an API and microservices foundation ready for future AI agents and LLM utilization.

For Tsuneishi Shipbuilding, the modernization of its procurement system, which has been in operation for over 15 years, faced significant challenges in terms of the time and effort required for investigating and analyzing the current system.

By introducing the latest AI-driven development approach, the company completed the visualization of technical debt, organization of business domains, and examination of redesign policies for microservices in just two days. This significantly shortened the initial assessment process that would have otherwise been prolonged, clarifying the direction for modernization into an API/microservices-based foundation ready for future AI utilization.

Furthermore, the design, implementation, and testing phases are expected to see a reduction in workload of over 70% compared to traditional estimates, marking a cutting-edge initiative in AI-driven core system modernization.

Background: Legacy Systems Long Untouched The company's procurement system is a mission-critical platform supporting important operations such as purchasing, steel procurement, and inventory management, utilized by many internal and external stakeholders.

However, due to the risk of operational disruptions across factories, long-standing operational complexity, and a lack of documentation, traditional approaches would have required excessive time and resources just for investigation and analysis, making investment decisions difficult. Against this backdrop, optimizing procurement costs and integrating operations across the group has become a critical management theme in advancing group-wide management and global expansion.

By utilizing AI-driven development, the company has greatly streamlined the initial assessment process, creating an environment where modernization of long-standing core systems can realistically begin.

AI-Driven Analysis and Modernization In this project, supported by Scalar, the company utilized refactoring AI agents to perform structural analysis, technical debt visualization, and design consolidation on thousands of lines of existing code in a short time. This is expected to reduce the overall development timeline for the final migration by over 70% compared to previous estimates. Additionally, the business domain has been redesigned based on AI analysis, with functions being organized into nine microservices. By cleanly separating data and functions, the project is building a next-generation architecture foundation that allows future AI agents and LLMs to securely and smoothly access necessary business context.

Reasons for Selecting Kong: Toward an AI-Ready API/Microservices Infrastructure "Kong Konnect" was adopted as the API foundation to connect and manage the new microservices-based system securely and flexibly.

Key evaluation points include: - Robust API Integration Management and Security: Centralized application and management of authentication, authorization, API control, and security policies for each microservice. - Support for Gradual Transition: Flexible operations allowing secure and phased migration (e.g., Blue/Green releases) from the existing system to the new one via a gateway. - High Scalability via Plugins: Ability to add plugins incrementally according to migration phases, from initial authentication to rate limiting, and future AI token management and AI agent integration. - Context Control for Future AI Utilization: Establishment of data paths where LLMs and AI agents can securely access business data (procurement, inventory, purchasing, accounting, etc.) organized by domain.

Future Outlook Starting with this procurement system modernization, Tsuneishi Shipbuilding plans to expand to surrounding systems, aiming to realize an environment where AI assistants can provide operational support and data utilization via natural language. By leveraging the domain-organized data foundation, the company aims to advance procurement operations by enhancing decision-making through past data usage.