2013
(Posted Oct. 2013)
Initiatives by NHBB (United States) (1)
Customers
Meeting Quality, Delivery and Environmental Expectations
To ensure business continuity into the future, we have to listen to customers who use our products and meet their expectations. To learn what customers' expectations are, NHBB conducts customer satisfaction surveys targeting the main customers of each business unit. We ask questions on around 40 topics, which include service-related areas such as legal matters and formalities in addition to product costs, value and delivery. Findings are then shared with plants so that improvements can be made.
Customers' strongest requests concern product quality and delivery dates. From aerospace customers, in particular, we also receive requests concerning fuel efficiency improvements, noise reduction and other aspects related to the environment due to their need to respond to strict environmental regulations. NHBB makes an effort to stay in close touch with customers as we seek to develop products that meet their requirements.
Suppliers
Making Environmental Improvements Together with Suppliers
Meeting with suppliers
To achieve sustainability, NHBB has to promote sustainability throughout the supply chain. We therefore meet with suppliers to exchange information on initiatives relating to quality and the environment and provide assistance for improvements to suppliers' production activities.
Many suppliers are small companies with 10 or fewer employees and as such are unable to respond adequately to environmental challenges and regulations. NHBB supports efforts by suppliers by dispatching facilities teams dedicated to energy and resource savings to suppliers' production facilities where they carry out surveys and analyses of energy usage and waste generation and give advice for making improvements. In one case, a supplier was discarding a large amount of metal scrap as waste until NHBB referred the company to a recycler. The supplier now earns revenue from what used to be waste because of this joint recycling effort. Enormous benefits have also been achieved in terms of reduced energy usage and costs and recycling of resources.
Employees
Raising Employee Awareness and Nurturing a Sustainability Culture
In order to achieve greater sustainability, it is important that we raise employee awareness and transform our organization to establish a culture based on sustainability. By incorporating elements of sustainability into all activities and implementing them, employee mentality will change and so will our corporate culture. It is more effective to make employees aware about sustainability by changing their day-to-day actions than by sitting them down and showing them some slides.
NHBB has made an open door policy part of its culture as a way to facilitate communication with employees. Under a principle of open and frank communication, employees can talk to their boss at any time and are free to ask questions in meetings held regularly to share information on managerial matters.
