2012

Porite (Mr. Ooshima): Speaking on behalf of my company, we will be able to comply with the contents of the new guidelines and we can confirm the compliance to a certain extent with regard to our primary suppliers. But regarding our secondary and tertiary suppliers, some areas of compliance may be difficult. I would like you to consider the level of the compliance required by your suppliers.

Fuji Print Industrial (Mr. Tomita): We also feel this is an issue, especially regarding small-sized suppliers. Even if they have a management structure in place, many of them do not have documentation and records. It will be difficult to have them submit reports to us, and that makes us wonder exactly how to proceed.

Minebea (Mr. Aiba): Actually, we have the same problem at Minebea. It's very difficult for us to confirm the activities of secondary and tertiary suppliers, and providing guidance is especially difficult with regard to overseas suppliers. But we can't give up. We are aiming to deepen understanding of the guidelines among our suppliers, even in small steps, and to move in the same direction with them. Then we can expect the understanding to gradually widen.

Nichia (Mr. Akagi): When confirming activities, it's important that making a plan and keeping a record are not the purpose of CSR initiatives, similar to some of their ISO activities, in order to prevent compliance with guidelines from becoming a superficial activity. It's important to have each supplier constantly consider where their activities are lacking and what initiatives they need to implement to prevent self-complacency.

Mr. Mizukami: We heard previously that Fujikura has made strong progress with CSR procurement activities, and I'd like to know how Fujikura handles secondary, tertiary, and overseas suppliers, which present the kind of problems we've just heard.

Fujikura (Mr. Takimoto): Previously, the operation conditions of one of our secondary Thai suppliers presented a problem from the perspective of CSR, and a local NPO conducted on-site research into the issue. Dealing with this issue became the impetus for my company to take fullfledged CSR procurement measures. We wondered whether we should be requesting our suppliers to take certain measures when we were not taking thorough measures ourselves, but in the end we decided that we needed to define a basic position and request our suppliers to meet certain requests. If we didn't, then nothing would change.

First, therefore, we conducted a CSR procurement survey of all of our domestic suppliers in 2010. We had planned to conduct a similar survey of overseas suppliers in 2011, but we canceled the plan due to the Thai flooding damage. The structure is in place, so we will restart the initiative when circumstances are right.

Minebea (Mr. Kobayashi): How many suppliers in and outside Japan are part of your survey?

Fujikura (Mr. Takimoto): There are about 500 domestic suppliers. Outside Japan, we plan to conduct the survey at different levels, with about 300 companies at the primary level.

Mr. Mizukami: What were the results of the domestic survey?

Fujikura (Mr. Takimoto): Of course, there were many suppliers who were very highly rated by the survey, but honestly speaking, there were many who fell short of our expectations. For those suppliers, we held followup meetings, and in some cases, we will visit them directly.

Minebea (Mr. Imanaka): It appears that surveys are very important. Sending out the survey provides an opportunity for the suppliers receiving them to think about CSR procurement. We also believe that a survey is the best way to begin the process, including for overseas suppliers.