NEC Creates All-AI Department with 17 Agents, Targets 100,000 Employees as First Clients
NEC has established an AI-only department, the Enterprise AI and Workforce Division, with no human staff but equal standing to HR and legal units. It operates as a command center for company-wide AI, generating task-specific agents to automate business processes. The pilot begins with executive meeting materials and expands to customer data analysis. Seventeen agents hold managerial roles, while AI managers create and train new AI employees. Human leaders retain final oversight, aiming to boost productivity amid Japan's shrinking labor force.
NEC Corporation has announced the establishment of the Enterprise AI and Workforce Division, a department composed entirely of AI with no human employees, yet positioned at the same organizational level as human resources, legal, and other corporate functions. Serving as a command center, the division centrally operates AI across the entire company. When departments such as sales or human resources request business process automation, the division generates the most suitable AI agents based on the task content, thereby reducing the operational burden on the requesting department.
The initial pilot will begin with the production of corporate management analysis materials for executive meetings, and will subsequently expand to business areas such as customer data analysis. The division is structured across four levels, with 17 agents assigned responsibilities as department heads, department CXOs, and managers. AI employees are created on demand by AI managers according to business needs, and upon generation, they first learn the corporate culture and internal regulations. These AI agents can also autonomously identify gaps in their own skills and continuously update their knowledge.
The highest-ranking leader of the AI division oversees all data across the business and reports to human management when necessary. The second level functions as an AI board of directors, mirroring corporate executive responsibilities. The AI simulates executive meetings, with executives responsible for AI transformation, finance, risk control, strategy, and audit convening regularly to discuss management issues related to the AI employee team. AI managers are responsible for generating AI employees and managing the quality of their business execution as well as costs such as token usage. Humans bear the ultimate responsibility for evaluation and control, establishing a governance mechanism.
From a group perspective, centralizing AI-related operations effectively curbs the tendency of individual departments to build and run AI agents in a fragmented manner. Against the backdrop of a declining labor force in Japan, NEC aims to establish a new corporate operating model that allows humans to focus on higher-order and more creative work.