CSR Activity Report (CSR Guideline Activity Reports)

Product Quality and Safety

Provide safe, highly reliable products by striving to enhance management systems for product quality assurance and safety, and disclose appropriate information.

Basic Approach

To live up to its “quality first” and “customer first” commitments, Toray Group has established policies on quality assurance and product safety, respectively, and an organizational framework to pursue both in an integrated manner. Specifically, the Quality Assurance Committee deliberates on basic policies and other matters, while the Quality Assurance Planning & Administration Department and the Product Safety Planning & Administration Department of the Quality Assurance Division plan and propose measures.
Additionally, Toray Group supplies product safety information in accordance with the characteristics of the product or service. The Group is fundamentally committed to respecting the Eight Basic Consumer Rights and strives to secure the quality and safety of its products throughout its business activities.
The Medium-Term Management Program, Project AP-G 2025, directs Toray Group to achieve sound, sustainable growth along with innovation and resilience management, and this hinges on securing product safety and quality. Accordingly, the Group continued to address individual areas for improvement and execute product safety measures in fiscal 2022.

In fiscal 2022, the Group also promoted measures to prevent any recurrence of past inappropriate actions related to obtaining certification for certain resin products from Underwriters Laboratories (UL).

Related Policies

Toray Group Quality PolicyRevised June 2007

We give top priority to the product quality offered to our customers as well as to safety and to the environment in our corporate activities. We work on quality assurance with the stance of "Customer First."

  1. We make our best efforts to meet our customers' expectations with products and services of high satisfaction.
  2. We commit ourselves to abide by the "Quality First" principle, and to improve the quality and reliability of our products, in all our divisions, including sales, manufacturing and research and development.
  3. We meet quality requirements at the stage of design and development, and ensure and enhance these in the manufacturing process.
  4. We continuously strive to organize, maintain and improve our quality management system.

Product Safety Management Basic PolicyEstablished January 1992

  1. We shall place priority on the various measures required to ensure product safety.
  2. We shall conduct adequate safety evaluations prior to marketing a new product.
  3. For products already on the market, we shall take note of feedback from customers and the general public and always remain attentive to safety.

Related Information

See the following page for information on chemical management.

Structure

Framework for Quality Assurance

The quality assurance framework of Toray Industries, Inc. is shown in the diagram below. The Quality Assurance Division Council, which meets monthly, and the Quality Assurance Managers Council, which meets twice a year, raise awareness and promote improvements based on group-wide quality assurance themes established by the Quality Assurance Committee. Quality assurance and product safety committees at divisions further examine the company-wide issues that have been identified by the Quality Assurance Division Council and Quality Assurance Managers Council, breaking them down into action items that are designated every year for implementation. Quality assurance, production, technology, and sales departments cooperate to tackle quality assurance issues and raise the level of activities.

Framework for Quality Assurance
Framework for Quality Assurance

Framework for Product Safety

Toray Industries' product safety framework is shown in the diagram below. The Product Safety Secretariat Meeting promotes and implements the annual company-wide product safety themes that are established by the Quality Assurance Committee. Quality assurance and product safety committees at the divisions further examine the group-wide issues that have been identified by the Product Safety Secretariat Meeting, breaking them down into action items that are designated every year for implementation. The action items are executed in cooperation with quality assurance, production, technology, and sales organizations at the departmental and divisional levels, to ensure thorough management of product safety and continue raising the level of management. Toray Group has been centrally tracking statistics on product accidents and the execution of product safety reviews since fiscal 2011.

Framework for Product Safety
Framework for Product Safety
Framework for Product Safety at Group Companies
Framework for Product Safety at Group Companies

Self-Inspections to Ensure Quality Assurance and Product Safety

Since fiscal 2016, Toray Group companies have been implementing self-inspections for quality assurance and product safety using the C-MOS internal control monitoring online system. Any issues that are identified through the self-inspections are corrected to ensure that improvements are made. The self-inspections are conducted on a three-year cycle to ensure that the basic frameworks for quality assurance and product safety are in place. For the first three-year cycle, Toray Industries was inspected in fiscal 2016, followed by group companies in Japan in fiscal 2017, and group companies outside Japan in fiscal 2018.
For the second three-year cycle implemented in fiscal 2019, Toray Group assigned inspection items to verify the effectiveness of improvements, and self-inspections were conducted. For the third three-year cycle implemented in fiscal 2022, confirmation items for UL and other certifications were assigned, and Toray Industries conducted self-inspections in the same year.

CSR Roadmap 2022 Targets

CSR Roadmap goals

  1. Achieve zero product accidents
  2. Enhance the group-wide framework for product safety and quality assurance

Main Initiatives and Key Performance Indicators

KPI
⑴ Aim for zero product accidents
4-❶
⑵ Establish a system to audit effectiveness of improvement and continuity of Toray Group’s overall quality assurance framework
-
⑶ Introduce a group-wide quality control system with fraud prevention features
-
⑷ Prepare and build a quality assurance system that covers quality assurance and quality control functions in each business
-
⑸ Provide quality assurance and product safety education
4-❷
Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Target Fiscal 2022 Result
Fiscal 2020 Fiscal 2021 Fiscal 2022
0 0 0 11
100% 100% 100% 100%
  1. Reporting Scope:Toray Group
  1. 1 An incident occurred in which a customer suffered a finger cut while unpacking processed yarn sold by Toray. The injury was caused by a box cutter blade stuck beneath packaging tape. The hazard originated in the product packaging area of an outsourced manufacturer(sales) site, when an employee failed to notice that a piece of broken cutter blade had become stuck to the tape used to seal the product package for shipping. To prevent this from happening again, Toray has prohibited its outsourced manufacturer(sales) from using this type of box cutter and has instructed them to improve check procedures during packaging.

Related Materiality for CSR

  • Enhancing Product Quality and Safety
  1. * Click here for the Materiality View of CSR Roadmap 2025 (PDF:392.4KB).PDF
  2. * Click here for a PDF summary of the relationships between materiality, associated CSR Roadmap 2022 main initiatives, KPIs and progress achieved, up to fiscal 2022 (PDF: 1.6MB).PDF

Looking to the Future

In fiscal 2023 and beyond, Toray Group will address individual issues related to improving quality assurance and product safety, while continuing to enhance its group-wide management systems for both quality assurance and product safety.
In addition, with respect to the inappropriate actions regarding UL certification in the Toray resins business, Toray Industries has received recommendations in the report by the expert committee that investigated this matter and, guided by these recommendations, is implementing a series of measures to prevent recurrence.

Click here for the main initiatives and KPIs for CSR Guideline No. 4 “Product Quality and Safety” during the CSR Roadmap 2025 period (fiscal 2023–2025).PDF

Fiscal 2022 CSR Activity Report

Click bellow on activity reports for fiscal 2022.