Efforts and Status

In creating a safer workplace, it is essential that each and every employee remains aware of health and safety issues and be on a constant lookout for potential dangers lurking in each working situation. This in turn requires training tailored to individual employees' capabilities, tasks and responsibilities. Based on our training system, we will continue to train managers in charge of work involving sources of danger and facility designers/developers on an ongoing basis. Going forward, we will develop more ways to guide people so that awareness turns into action.

To prevent accidents from occurring while responding to equipment trouble or a short stoppage it is necessary to prevent the underlying cause-equipment failure. We strive to minimize equipment failure through the use of mechanical monitoring and analysis at each stage of production. This allows us to identify equipment areas that require inspection and maintenance, which are then put on a regular schedule of maintenance. We have also introduced system features that detect abnormal values before a failure occurs, to allow measures to be taken to correct each problem, thereby minimizing the frequency of equipment failures and short stoppages or eliminating them entirely.

Since establishing facility safety standards in FY2005 aimed at promoting inherently safe design, we have attempted to make new production facilities inherently safe by evaluating risks and incorporating appropriate countermeasures from the design and development stages. In FY2011 we revised our industrial safety and health rules and notification system, and updated our facility safety standards to reflect ideas for improvement submitted by supervisors and personnel in charge of operational departments. We also added to the standards used for plant equipment. Going forward, we will revise those standards to make them easier to understand, which will facilitate better equipment use and safe manufacturing.

We continue to improve operating methods and other measures to prevent workers from coming into contact with chemicals or to minimize that likelihood. We also verify the capacity of local ventilation systems, making refinements as necessary. In FY2011 we continued to implement safety measures put in place the previous year as planned to guard against exposure to nanomaterials. Such measures include verifying the capacity of dust removal equipment and local ventilation systems.

We take a comprehensive approach to preventing chemical fires through such measures as managing humidity, making facilities explosion-proof, and removing static electricity from jigs and personnel. In FY2011 we were motivated by fires that occurred at other companies to inspect every one of our sites to see how well measures were being implemented to prevent static electricity ignition. Results showed that such measures are being carefully observed.

To prevent unsafe behavior by workers, TAIYO YUDEN has drawn up operating procedures for both normal and irregular tasks and standardized key points requiring strict observance for health and safety reasons. We objectively check and evaluate the maintenance and management situation for each work site risk, and take action to improve the situation. As part of this effort, we check compliance with procedures to ensure safety when safety equipment has been disabled.

When an accident occurs, it is essential to prevent similar accidents from occurring at other sites. Our accident database is used by the health and safety committee at each business site to provide accident updates, explain causes, provide training on accident prevention, and set up safety measures when designing facilities.

Starting in FY2008, the TAIYO YUDEN Group began taking specific measures to protect lives in the event of a major earthquake. These measures target four particular areas: (1) Ensuring evacuation routes; (2) Keeping objects from falling; (3) Preventing secondary accidents; and (4) Earthquake-proofing buildings. We intend to further detail these measures based on the conditions at each business site, but have fallen behind in doing so due to economic reasons.