Quality Assurance and Product Safety

Our Concepts and SII Group Basic Quality Policy

SII deploys a wide range of quality assurance activities across the board from customers' viewpoints to ensure that our customers use our products safely with a sense of security.

"Improve the Quality, Cost, Delivery and Safety of our Products and Services to create increased value for customers."

This is the SII Group Basic Quality Policy, which incorporates our strong commitment to achieve customer satisfaction with our product quality as well as meeting high standard of cost, delivery and product safety.

We have established a quality assurance promotion system to embody the policy and have been taking the following basic measures.

1. Comply with each country's engineering laws, regulations and a wide variety of specifications
2. Establish a system and develop human resources to ensure product quality and safety in the development and design phases
3. Share information of product quality and safety

Quality Assurance Promotion System

We have established the SII Group quality assurance and product safety promotion systems that consist of the SII President, the Group's quality assurance representative serving as a chief executive, and quality assurance representatives in each division.

Each division conducts quality assurance activities based on the Basic Quality Policy. The Quality Assurance Division at the head office deploys company-wide initiatives through information sharing with quality assurance departments at each division, active support, education, and audit. Especially for information sharing about quality assurance and product safety, a network was established among quality assurance representatives at each division to take speedy actions.

ISO9001 and IATF16949 Certification

SII has acquired ISO 9001 (2015) certification, an international standard for quality management systems. With the aim of further strengthening our company-wide quality assurance system, we are working to move away from conventional certification of individual business units and affiliates to a company-wide, integrated certification. We have completed the unification of our domestic sites in Japan. We have also organized a Quality Management System Study Group to improve the effectiveness of the system.
Our divisions involved in the automotive industry have also acquired IATF16949 certification.

Quality Control Education

We provide quality control training for all employees so that each and every one of them can contribute to quality improvement. Currently, we offer a total of 30 courses in six areas, ranging from courses for beginners to expert development.
In addition to these group training programs, we also provide product-specific training for each division. I

Also, as a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we have adopted remote and distance learning methods to continue human resources development.
In FY 2022 we provided a variety of training to a total of more than 500 employees at our sites in Japan and around the world. This result is the same level of numbers as in FY 2019, returning to the frequency of training prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

SII encourages its employees to take the Quality Management and Quality Control Examination^*. The aim is to enhance individual knowledge of quality control, which will improve the quality of products. In FY 2022, a total of 41 employees passed the exam from Levels 1 to 4 . (As of May 2023)

^* Quality Management and Quality Control Examination: A certification test on quality control organized by the Japanese Standards Association and the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, and accredited by the Japanese Society for Quality Control. It is an objective evaluation of the level of knowledge of quality control by a nationwide written test. There are four levels of certification.

Quality Assurance that Establishes Security and Reliability

The SII basic concept of product safety is "to improve customers’ trust by providing safe products and services." Based on this concept, we continue to provide the Products Safety Education to raise product safety awareness and cultivate engineers with safety knowledge.

We also established the Product Safety Network within the SII Group. For all the SII products, it conducts regular inspections of compliance with laws and regulations concerning product and technical safety, and verifies product safety and appropriateness according to each country’s laws and regulations.

In case of accidents due to SII products, we report to the senior management within ten minutes, as well as attempt to promptly solve the problem and prevent the recurrence of accidents. After these actions, we share the information throughout the entire Group and deploy activities horizontally.

Ensuring Product Quality in the Development Phase

For the most part, quality problems and variances occur due to causes in the development and engineering stages. SII ensures product quality in these stages to raise the products' entire quality level, and this approach is part of quality improvement activity in which we put a great deal of effort.

For example, SII has taken a variety of initiatives to enhance engineers' views and ways of thinking, using quality engineering, statistical approach, 3D CAD, CAE, and instrumental analysis. We also strive to minimize quality variances derived from concurrent optimization of engineering and machining parameters in collaboration with related divisions including Quality Assurance, Research and Development, Production Engineering and Analytical Estimate Divisions.

Global Operation Process Review

SII is committed to delivering high-quality products and services to our customers. To ensure this, the Quality Assurance Division at the head office conducts the Operation Process Review for all business divisions, including those overseas. During the reviews, we check the certainty, level of awareness, progress of improvement, effectiveness, and other aspects of all business processes to ensure quality.

Quality Audit / Technical Guidance

Preventing the spread of COVID-19 is an important measure to ensure the safety of society and stakeholders. For this reason, it is necessary to reduce human-to-human contact as much as possible. At the same time, close collaboration with related parties is required to provide high quality products and services.
Therefore, in FY 2022, we have been conducting audits and technical guidance using remote technology. It is important to have a different perspective and a different way of communicating from audits and technical guidance conducted on-site, and we continue to accumulate and utilize this know-how.