2012
(Posted Oct. 2012)
Expectations of Minebea
Mr. Mizukami: I'd like to hear participants' comments on what they expect of Minebea in terms of support for carrying out CSR procurement in line with the guidelines.
Porite (Mr. Ooshima): In regard to chemical substance regulations, for example, there are instances when it is difficult to ask small suppliers for an official product certificate. We would like some guidance on what kind of certificates would be acceptable from small suppliers. We would also like some guidance on exactly how to give advice to suppliers in order to have them smoothly comply with our requests.
Kyodo Yushi (Mr. Watanabe): Especially with overseas suppliers, we'd like Minebea to understand that many suppliers say they cannot disclose information regarding the use of chemical substances. In addition, when we are required to submit quantitativedata, please consider the fact that chemical substance analysis and other fees are incurred.
Fuji Print Industrial (Mr. Tomita): I feel that just having these types of opportunities to meet face to face with you will make it significantly easier to carry out initiatives in the future. For us as well, while it may be impossible for all suppliers to comply with our requests, we would like to start by having these types of meetings with a select number of suppliers and then gradually expand efforts to our entire supply chain. We would like to use these human connections to make progress on CSR procurement.
Fujikura (Mr. Takimoto): One of the advantages of listening to the activities of companies with advanced CSR activities is that we can see, among all the possible initiatives, which ones we need to prioritize. That's why this type of dialogue today is so important.
Nichia (Mr. Akagi): As we've heard from the discussion today, requests from outside your company can become significant opportunities to move your company in the right direction, so by all means I'd like Minebea to conduct its survey. For Nichia, we've always prided ourselves on domestic manufacturing, and consequently there are areas of doing business overseas which we have little knowledge of or experience with. We would appreciate any guidance from Minebea on expanding CSR outside Japan.
Sumitomo Metal Industries (Mr. Haga): With regard to your survey, I would like Minebea to share the results with all the companies that participate. Receiving feedback which shows that our efforts are lacking in certain areas compared to other companies will provide a strong motivation for promoting CSR procurement within my company.
Mr. Mizukami: The comments from each of the companies here today reflect the importance of communication between companies and their customers and suppliers. I understand that Sumitomo Metal Industries' approach is to work together with each of its stakeholders and that you invest a lot of energy in this.
Sumitomo Metal Industries (Mr. Haga): We pursue improvements in compliance, safety management, quality management and other areas by working closely as one team with partner companies. Our thinking is that we can help each other raise the level of activities by collaborating in the same places and on the same kinds of activities.
We regularly dispatch veteran employees from our steel mills to customer sites where our products are actually being used to verify that the products meet our quality standards. Customer feedback is then routed back to the steel mills as part of our quality assurance cycle.
