Before You Submit

1. Identify Your Executive Sponsor (GM+):

All submissions require a General Manager or above to sponsor the initiative. Have you confirmed their support and have their name and email ready?

2. Define Your Business Objective & Success Metric:

• Be able to clearly state in one or two sentences the business problem you are solving.
• How will you measure success? (e.g., "Reduce operational costs by 15%," "Improve customer response time by 30%").

3. Understand Your Data (The Most Important Step):

• Input/Output: What specific data will the model use (inputs) and what will it create (outputs)?
• Data Classification: What is the highest classification level of your input and output data? You will need to select one: Public, Protected, Confidential, or Highly Confidential.
• Special Data Types: Does your data include Personal Information (PI) or Vehicle-Generated Data (VGD)? A "yes" answer here is critical as it will require a privacy review.

4. Identify Any Vendor Involvement:

Are you using a third-party tool, model, or service (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, a specialized vendor)? Have the vendor's name and details ready.

5. Know Your End Users:

Who will be using this AI/ML solution? Be ready to specify if they are internal TMNA employees, other Toyota affiliates, or external users like customers or dealers.

6. Clarify Your Intent (POC vs. Production):

Is this a short-term Proof-of-Concept (POC) to test feasibility, or is this intended to be a full-scale Production deployment?

7. Complete the BEACON approval process:

If you have not submitted your use-case through the BEACON process, please fill out the Beacon process through the link below. BEACON approval is a prerequisite for progressing to Funding and ITEC approval stages.

BEACON Intake Form →