Fulfillment of Our Responsibilities to Provide Safe and Secure Products and Services

Ensuring Quality and Safety through Company-wide Quality Management

The GS Yuasa Group is promoting initiatives aiming to improve the quality of the products and services offered to our customers on a group-wide basis, based on the Quality Policy. To remain a manufacturer trusted by customers at all times, the GS Yuasa Group approaches manufacturing activities from the customer's perspective and works relentlessly to improve the quality of products and services.

To maintain this trust, we formulated, under the leadership of top management, the GS Yuasa Quality Management System based on the ISO 9001 standard and are promoting a quality management system that crosses business divisions. The quality of our products and services is discussed company-wide every month by the Quality Management Committee, which is chaired by the executive officer in charge of quality, to enable us to enhance quality by responding swiftly to any change.

As part of our initiatives to pursue manufacturing, we provide quality-related education courses to all employees and promote improvement team activities company-wide as a way to bolster the awareness of quality among employees and to boost their understanding and skills related to quality management. Thereby enhancing the quality of our products and services.

These activities have been highly rated by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, and the Industrial Batteries Production Division of the Industrial Batteries & Power Sources Business Unit received the Deming Prize, which is designed to reward individuals and companies who have produced good results through the implementation of quality management, in fiscal 2015.

'Monozukuri':
Meaning 'Meaning 'manufacturing' is not just pointing to 'craftsmanship' in the narrow sense. It is "the overall process of the corporation, the industry and the on-site activity, implementing the designers' determination into the products and the services for customer satisfaction, corporate profit and job security."

The fiscal 2018 quality loss index is set at 100, indicating the changes in the quality loss rate over five years.

IATF16949: International standard for quality management systems in the automotive indsutry

Rounds of inspection by top management

The GS Yuasa Group systematically conducts rounds of onsite inspection, centering on domestic factories and branches, by management. Through rounds of inspection by management conducted as part of top management activities, the management grasps the actual state of onsite operations and has a dialogue with employees working at each site.

Based on the "quality" of work, employees share the situation of actual activities and tasks regarding various themes such as safety, quality and environment with management, fostering mutual understanding.

Persons in charge of onsite operations as well as younger managers report tasks and activities of each site to management, providing an opportunity for the exchange of opinions between employees and management.

Promoting Greater Customer Satisfaction

The GS Yuasa Group values the opinions, recommendations and complaints of customers regarding our products and services as important customer feedback. We improve our products and services after considering inquires received by email and the opinions of customers heard at our Consultation Service Counter. We have taken measures using audio guidance through which the telephone number of a person in charge is automatically dialed according to inquiries from customers from fiscal 2017, making efforts to improve convenience for customers.

The number of complaints received from customers has tended to decline.
Going forward, we will continue working to improve customer satisfaction by paying close attention to the opinions of our customers.

Improving Employees' Awareness of Quality

We continuously operate a system under which all directors and employees can be taught based on the type of their work and their experience through a quality education program systemized according to the level of quality control and type and rank of their job. Furthermore, basic quality-related education has been compulsory for all new recruits since fiscal 2008 and their knowledge of quality control (QC) is evaluated based on the results of the QC examination. Since fiscal 2023, some courses have been delivered in video format, enabling employees to learn at their own pace.

The Group is committed to working on quality-related education targeting employees to improve product quality and ensure the safety of its products.

Note: QC Exam levels are for reference only.

Presentation about Team Activities to Drive Kaizen (improvement)

The GS Yuasa Group is promoting kaizen team activities to bolster the awareness of quality among employees and conduct aggressive quality management control in an effort to improve the quality of our products and services. In addition, we have held a presentation event at which kaizen teams present examples of their improvement activities since fiscal 2004, for the following purposes:

• Promotion of activities to enhance workplace capabilities
• Learning from kaizen activities/successful results and horizontal deployment
• Participation of all employees in kaizen activities
• Promotion of dynamic communications
• Building a corporate culture with a mindset focused on improvement

Every year, a large number of employees, including employees of overseas Group companies, participate at the presentation event, and kaizen teams nominated by each business division present examples of their various improvement measures. This presentation event was held twice in fiscal 2023, and executives and involved employees participated at the venue, while audience members participated online. At the end of the presentation event, the executive officer in charge of quality gave feedback (individual and overall) to the teams, and the President expressed his appreciation to the teams and provided an assessment of the presentations. Furthermore, the "encouragement award" by the President and the "impression award" determined by participants' votes were presented to teams. At presentation events in recent years, not only kaizen teams in quality-related business divisions but also people in the sales and development divisions, management divisions, and internal divisions made presentations, with a variety of themes.

The GS Yuasa Group believes that everyone must attain quality management tools. Through the presentation event, we will share experiences/know-how in each workplace on a global basis and horizontally develop the results of improvement, continuing our efforts to conduct various improvement activities.

Holding an exhibition showing examples of critical quality problems

The GS Yuasa Group believes that failure at a workplace provides a valuable learning opportunity in terms of the prevention of defective products.

From this perspective, we have taken measures from fiscal 2016; specifically, we share information on examples of past product-related accidents caused by unsafe conditions and critical quality problems with employees so that we will never allow a similar quality problem to occur.

In fiscal 2023, the critical quality problem example exhibition was held at the Kyoto Plant, one of our Group companies, and 258 employees participated in this exhibition.

These exhibitions use panels and other means to explain the causes, mechanisms and other aspects behind the occurrence of past critical quality problems, helping employees recognize examples of past mistakes as important lessons. For further understanding of such lessons, areas are provided for exhibition-related presentations and Q&A sessions. Until fiscal 2018, the exhibition was held for limited periods, but by changing it to a permanent exhibit, information on critical quality problems can be shared with employees from sites other than the Kyoto Plant at any time.

Results of participant questionnaires indicate that these exhibitions are effective in raising employee awareness of quality issues. Reflecting such visitor desires, exhibitions will continue to utilize the lessons of past failures to raise quality going forward.