As a premise to deliver products of a high environmental quality to our customers, we must use materials and parts that are also of a high environmental quality. Fujikura is conducting the following activities with meticulous attention so as not to procure materials that contain substances of concern (SOC).
The division in charge of procurement distributes a copy of Fujikura's guidelines on the use of SOCs to all its major suppliers, asks that they comply with the guidelines, and undertakes a survey on their use of substances of concern in products to be purchased by Fujikura. For products in which SOCs are used, their content percentage is identified and managed at the ppm unit level.
We have built a SOC database, in which data of about 4,500 materials and parts that we have purchased are registered. Via the intranet, the in-house divisions can access this database whenever they want to search and obtain information on the use of SOCs in the purchased materials and parts.
We have asked our major suppliers to support us in environmental management by implementing the following measures:
To provide our customers with safe products, we analyze and manage the use of substances of concern in the purchased products, using our ISO 17025-certified top-level analysis technology.
| Inorganic analyses | Atomic absorption, ICP, XRF, EPMA, XRD, and others |
|---|---|
| Organic analyses | GC/MS, various spectroscopic measurement devices for UV absorption spectroscopy, etc., IC, and others |
The Environment and Analysis Center was accredited as a laboratory conforming to ISO/IEC 17025 on October 1, 2004 in recognition of the accuracy and reproducibility of its analysis values in the rubbers and plastics field. Under the ISO/IEC 17025-based laboratory accreditation system, accreditation bodies examine testing and calibration laboratories to check if they have the sufficient capacity to conduct tests in a specific field in compliance with the standards.
Accreditation by these bodies gives the following advantages:
We conducted a survey on the environmental management efforts of our suppliers focusing on the following items:
Based on the results of the survey, we asked suppliers who were not implementing sufficient environmental measures to make related improvements.
Fujikura posts a list of stationery and office equipment to be purchased by the Company on its intranet, where environmentally friendly models are indicated with the Eco Mark and Green Project Mark. Employees are encouraged to choose environmentally friendly products from the list when they want to purchase goods in order to promote green purchasing across the Company.