Quality Management
Commitment
Message from the Chairperson of Quality Committee
The Sumitomo Riko Group positions Safety, Environment, Compliance, and Quality (S.E.C.-Q) as the basis of its business operations.
From fiscal 2017, as a sub-committee of the CSR Committee, the Quality Committee pursued activities to check the state of compliance with laws and ordinances, contracts, and rules, focusing on quality compliance issues. From fiscal 2020, discussions on compliance were left to the existing Compliance Committee, and the Quality Committee became independent from the CSR Committee to report and discuss the progress of quality improvement activities in each business division based on the company-wide quality activity policy and activities to prevent the recurrence and horizontal deployment of important quality problems. As a result, the number of critical quality issues is on a downward trend, but the activities to prevent recurrence and horizontal deployment are not yet sufficient. In fiscal 2021, the committee will follow up on the status of the completion of fundamental measures by going into the root causes of individual critical quality issues.
With the Quality Committee as the cornerstone, aiming at achieving product quality that is trusted around the world, we will strengthen the quality assurance system of the globally expanding Sumitomo Riko Group in line with the changing times and increasingly sophisticated customer requirements by appointing committee members from across the organization. The present-day Sumitomo Riko Group embodies a long tradition of excellence in manufacturing. Having established the Quality Committee, we are redoubling our efforts to offer products of superior quality and contribute to development of society as a "Global Excellent Manufacturing Company," that is, a company contributing to safety, comfort, and the environment for people, society, and the earth. I will be delighted if this website assists our stakeholders in their understanding of the Group's commitment to quality and request your continuing support.
Shinichi Waku
Chairperson of Quality Committee
Director and Managing Executive Officer
Basic Approach to Quality
The Quality Committee and the Quality Assurance Headquarters are spearheading quality improvement activities throughout the Sumitomo Riko Group in accordance with the Sumitomo Riko Group's quality control policy. Our quality assurance systems geared to the needs of an aspiring global enterprise assure superior product quality and safety.
Sumitomo Riko Group's quality control policy
The Sumitomo Riko Group is committed to offering its customers worldwide attractive products that are attuned to their needs. To fulfill our mission, we are pushing forward with quality improvement activities throughout the Sumitomo Riko Group, adhering to our company-wide quality policy: “Every member of the Sumitomo Riko Group will accumulate improvements and pursue the customer-first and quality-first principles globally. —Ensuring compliance with the basics of work is the first step for 'Ji-Kotei-Kanketsu (JKK)'.—”
Approach to quality assurance in the Sumitomo Riko Group
The Sumitomo Riko Group ensures quality by applying the following two approaches in the pursuit of safety and security.
The first approach is "Ji-Kotei-Kanketsu (JKK)." JKK emphasizes that each employee should have a sense of ownership that encourages him or her to fulfill his or her duty at each process of product design, pre-production, and mass production so that no defect proceeds to subsequent processes. (See Fig. 1.)
The second concept is "Appropriate Quality Governance”. We pursue "Peace of Mind" by conducting quality risk management through "provision of products and services to customers and quality risk management" by business units and responsible quality assurance departments, and "monitoring, support and guidance for quality risk reduction" by the group-wide quality assurance department (see Figure 2).
- Fig. 1: Ji-Kotei-Kanketsu (JKK) — Defect-free
- Fig. 2: Appropriate quality governance — Reliability
Mid-term Vision for Quality and Product Safety
To achieve the 2022V vision in quality-related organizations, the Sumitomo Riko Group will globally implement the following three measures as priority activities.
1) Quality assurance system
By constructing quality assurance systems that have the SRK-GQS as superordinate standards and are aligned with the standards of each business unit, realize globally consistent levels of quality, eliminate major quality problems, and link these successes to improvement in customer satisfaction.
2) Quality governance
Strengthen quality monitoring to enable management to make appropriate judgments and build a global quality governance structure. Furthermore, to respond to quality risks, globally implement quality control audits to monitor whether there has been any misconduct and link them to the elimination of quality-related misconduct and major quality problems.
3) Creation of a quality culture
Cultivate a corporate culture of quality-first, through the promotion of top-down, company-wide quality control activities and the establishment of position-specific quality education programs.
Quality Control Systems
Quality assurance systems
In 2016, Sumitomo Riko appointed a Chief Quality Officer (CQO) and established the Quality Assurance Headquarters, integrating the Group's quality functions.
With an organizational structure designed to ensure independence from business units and objectivity, the Quality Assurance Headquarters enhances the Group's quality assurance by strengthening the auditing function and has established a collaborative framework covering business units.
By implementing quality management systems exceeding customer expectations, we are able to supply our customers as well as all other stakeholders with safe, reliable products that offer them peace of mind.
The Quality Committee
The Sumitomo Riko Group has added Quality (Q) to Safety, Environment, and Compliance (S.E.C.), which are the basis of its business operations, from fiscal 2017 onward, changing it to S.E.C.-Q. In line with this, we have established the "Quality Committee" to strengthen the function of monitoring whether the PDCA cycle for quality is being implemented.
