Mục lục

Quality Improvement

Epson conducts activities to improve the quality of its products, services, manufacturing and sales in order to provide quality that exceeds customer expectations and earns their trust.

Supplier Quality Assurance

Epson internally manufactures key components such as printheads for inkjet printers. At the same time, our suppliers also provide us with many of the parts needed for manufacturing. Therefore, our quality assurance programs go beyond the Epson Group. We share our approach to quality with our suppliers and work with them to improve quality.

For example, we stipulate our basic quality assurance policies and requirements in quality assurance standards, verify the quality of parts by visiting suppliers, and give them advice about ways to improve.

Quality Control Improvement in Manufacturing Processes

The role of manufacturing processes is to create products that accurately reflect the voice of the customer captured in product plans and designs. In manufacturing processes, we build products that meet specified quality requirements. We specify a lot of quality controls for product components and processes. Quality control engineers are sent to manufacturing sites worldwide to introduce quality improvement activities so that we can strictly manage required controls at the sites and assure quality.

We collaborate with local engineers to solve problems logically, develop the talents of manufacturing professionals, and improve quality at plants around the world.

Improvement in collaboration with an overseas affiliate

Global Sharing of Service & Support Information

Epson has built service and support organizations around the world so that our customers can use our products and services with confidence.

We hold an annual Epson Group Services and Support Conference that is attended by people in charge of these functions at our overseas regional sales headquarters and some sales companies. The purpose of the meeting is to improve the quality of our service and support. At the meeting, we share technical information about service and support, as well as about the use of our products and services by customers. We also review actions and discuss issues to formulate long-term strategies. The results of the meeting are used in our Group companies around the world.

Epson Group Services and Support Meeting

Improvement of Employee Quality Control Skills

Training

Epson provides quality control training to all employees so that they can help improve quality. Manufacturing personnel, engineers, and office workers separately receive training for the basics of QC first. After that, they receive systematic training to learn the skills required to fulfill their duties and participate in E-kaizen programs (see below).
In addition, we train and certify QC trainers at overseas production sites and certify trainers so that our overseas employees can receive the same level of training as our employees in Japan.
Epson aims to develop people who are able to identify and address the root causes of problems so that we can produce and sell products and services that exceed customer expectations.

Standard QC Courses for All Employees (FY2021, Japan)

Course
People tranied
% trained

QC Introduction
403
90%

QC-ABC
320
77%

Licensed Quality Control Training Trainers

Region
Number of Production Sites with Licensed Trainers
Licensed Trainers*1

Southeast Asia
7 companies
78

China
5 companies
49

*1 Number of licensed trainers as of March 31, 2022.

Kaizen Activities

The entire Epson Group participates in continuous improvement activities. Called “E-Kaizen” at Epson, these activities are used by both teams and individuals to solve problems.

Epson holds an annual Worldwide Team Presentations conference at which the best teams from each of four blocs (Japan, China, Southeast Asia, and Europe/ America) present the results of their kaizen activities. Their accomplishments are judged, and the teams that report the most outstanding accomplishments are recognized with awards. In addition to sharing kaizen presentations within each bloc, Epson reports best activities in the company newsletter and on the company intranet to motivate others to learn and make their own improvements.

Rather than gathering in one place, the FY2022 Worldwide Team Presentations conference was held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 13 teams participated. There were four teams from two companies in Japan, four teams from three companies in Southeast Asia, and four teams from two company in China, and one team from Europe. “On Demand,” a team from Japanese production site Tohoku Epson Corporation, was presented with the President’s Award in recognition of the outstanding actions it took to reduce the physical burden on workers in the label press manufacturing process.

The members of the President’s Award-winning “On Demand” team

Activities to Raise Awareness

November is CS & Quality Month across the global Epson Group. During the month, all personnel are encouraged to think about what a commitment to customer satisfaction, as enshrined in the Management Philosophy, means, and to look back on the quality of their own work. The slogan for the 2022 fiscal year was “To win more Epson fans, create and deliver value by learning from failure.”

A lecture on “failure studies” was held to teach employees how to capitalize on failures. Concrete steps were presented to enable them to learn from failures and to develop creative solutions that turn failures into success. A large number of employees listened to the talk live in the main hall and at the 18 sites to which it was broadcast. Others listened to a video of the talk that was posted on the company intranet. We also provided an online training course focused on failure studies to Epson Group employees in Japan, more than 90% of whom completed the course. The material for the course was translated into English and Chinese and was also used to train people at our Group companies overseas. In addition to the foregoing activities, each of our operations divisions and global sales and manufacturing companies carried out their own events related to learning from failures. Through activities like these, we are endeavoring to win more Epson fans, not only by demonstrating a commitment to customer satisfaction but also by showing all stakeholders that Epson genuinely is a good company.

CS & Quality Month poster (Japanese)