Quality Control

Quality Control Policy

Based on Toshiba Group Quality Control Policy, we aim to provide our customers with safe and reliable products, services and systems, and are working to ensure superior quality as perceived by our customers. By increasing our sensitivity to potential risks and dealing with them swiftly, we strive to eliminate product accidents and provide unrivaled customer satisfaction.

Quality Promotion Structure

Under the global quality control structure, the Chief Quality Officer is responsible for quality control throughout the Group, while Chief Quality Executives are in charge of quality control within in-house companies and key group companies. The Chief Quality Officer convenes periodic meetings to develop policies and discuss quality control measures with the Chief Quality Executives who are responsible for providing guidance and conducting audits of factories, suppliers, maintenance, and service companies and manufacturing outsourcees worldwide to enhance the quality level throughout product life cycles, from development and production through to final disposal.

Quality Promotion Structure

Quality Control Checks and Audits

Chief Quality Executives guide and audit factories, suppliers, maintenance and service providers, and manufacturing outsources worldwide to enhance quality throughout product life cycles from development and production through to final disposal.

Promoting Initiatives Aimed at Enhancing Capabilities to Ensure Product Quality

In order to ensure that customers associate Toshiba with quality, we are engaged in an activity called “Design for Quality (DFQ)” to improve our quality management system. We are promoting the visualization of all processes from product design to mass production and, furthermore, of quality assurance in the market. In particular, Toshiba exchanges and shares information on the quality of procured products among other companies in the Group with the aim of establishing a quality control process that utilizes knowledge of quality control failures.

In order to maintain standards for quality products, Toshiba Group is working to enhance its capabilities to ensure quality by adopting a proactive approach to quality rather than the conventional protective one. More specifically, of the four main pillars of quality listed below, we focus on improving the Quality Management System (QMS), not simply obtaining ISO 9001 certification but also improving the system by means of raising the quality of design and procurement, the root cause of losses, as well as by enhancing the training of personnel who can support the development of the system. Compliance is the foundation for all these activities.

Four pillars to enhance quality capabilities

In order to enhance its capabilities to ensure product quality, Toshiba Group is promoting failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) mainly for design work as one of its DFQ initiatives for preventing defective designs. In FY2010, in order to further reinforce FMEA activities, we formed a working group to exchange information obtained from these activities and trained 20 instructors to make FMEA an integral part of our all four business domains.

In FY2010, Toshiba Corp., with the cooperation of Toshiba China Co., Ltd., provided training to a total of 57 quality personnel with a view to strengthening quality personnel globally. The topics covered in this training included “Basic knowledge to improve the quality of procurements” (Guangzhou) and “Basic knowledge for quality innovations (basics of QMS)” (Guangzhou and Hangzhou).

ISO9001:2000 Certification (Employee ratio)

Product Operations and Toshiba Group companies have put in place management systems for obtaining certification for the ISO 9000 family of standards for quality management systems.

Toshiba Corporation

Toshiba Group (in Japan)

Toshiba Group
(overseas subsidiaries)

Toshiba Group (in Japan and overseas subsidiaries)

Note1:

Certification ratio = Number of employees of certified sites / Number of all employees

Note2:

Data as of March, 2011

Education on Quality Control

We established the Toshiba Quality Training System to foster personnel who can contribute to quality improvement at all concerned divisions. We develop and promote education programs to improve awareness on quality management depending upon the requirements of each division, as well as to improve skills on reliability techniques and quality control methods.

In order to foster personnel that are capable of taking charge of quality assurance, we develop and implement quality training programs for employees in all divisions related to product life cycles on methods of analyzing the causes of product accidents and preventing them. We also provide compliance training and e-learning on the Electrical Appliance and Material Safety Law at a Group-wide level.

Securing Cooperation from Suppliers to Ensure Quality

Suppliers are Toshiba Group's indispensable business partners and ensuring the quality of procurement items is being increasingly important. In order to ensure the quality of procurement items, we distribute TOSHIBA Quality Assurance Guidelines for Suppliers summarizing Toshiba Group's quality assurance policy and supplier expectations. Based on cooperation among procurement, quality assurance and engineering operations, Toshiba Group audits suppliers at appropriate intervals in view of the types and importance of the procurement items in order to ensure quality of procurement items.

Disclosure of Information on Quality

In the event that incidents related to quality occur, information is disclosed on the Toshiba website in order to notify customers of such incidents as quickly as possible.