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 2022, directs Toray Group to pursue resilience and proactive management to achieve growth, and this hinges on securing product safety and quality. The Group continued to address individual areas for improvement and execute product safety measures in fiscal 2021.
However, in fiscal 2021, Toray Industries, Inc. announced that inappropriate actions at Toray related to certification of certain resin products by Underwriters Laboratories (hereinafter, "UL"), a global third-party safety science organization headquartered in the United States, had taken place. This fact was announced on January 31, 2022, and on the same day, the Company formed an expert committee to conduct a thorough investigation and study the root cause. On April 8, the Company received the committee report that sets out the findings of the investigation along with recommended measures to prevent recurrence.
In response to this situation, Toray Group is focused on further strengthening compliance and is doing its utmost to prevent recurrence and restore trust in the Group.

• For more information on the Toray response to this matter, please refer to:
  Response to Inappropriate Actions Relating to UL Certification in the Toray Resins Business

Related Policies

Structure

Framework for Quality Assurance

The quality assurance framework of Toray Industries, Inc. is shown in the diagram below. The Quality Assurance Managers Council promotes and implements the annual group-wide quality assurance themes that are 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 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 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.

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, with Toray Industries taking its turn to conduct self-inspections in fiscal 2019 followed by group companies in Japan in fiscal 2020 and group companies outside Japan in fiscal 2021.

CSR Roadmap 2022 Targets

1. 1 (1) An incident occurred in which an electrically heated floor mat manufactured and sold by Toray some time between 1976 and 1983 overheated, causing flooring and other materials to burn. The ensuing recall has been ongoing since 2008, and Toray Industries has once again posted recall notices on our website and in national newspapers. This incident did not result in injury or harm to any persons.
   (2) An accident involving carbon fiber volleyball posts manufactured for non-general consumption and sold by a Toray Group company resulted in a broken arm. The net winder had been attached to a post in order to unwind the net when the aged winder gear, which had been worn down over time, caused the winder handle to spin in reverse, breaking a player's arm. Each customer who had purchased the product was contacted and asked to perform the periodic inspections as described in the instruction manual.

Looking to the Future

In fiscal 2022 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.

• For more information on the Toray response to this matter, please refer to:
  Response to Inappropriate Actions Relating to UL Certification in the Toray Resins Business

Fiscal 2021 CSR Activity Report

Click below on activity reports for fiscal 2021