Smart Design

Developing Environmentally Friendly Products

The TAIYO YUDEN aggressively promotes the development of Smart Products which can reduce environmental impact by eliminating the three M's – muda (wastefulness), mura (unevenness), and muri (overburden).

Smart Product Development System

The Smart Products that we have in mind reflect environmental considerations not just when they are used, but at all stages from design through production, sales, and incorporation into the final product right up to final disposal. This means eliminating what in Japanese are called the three M's - muda (wastefulness), mura (unevenness), and muri (overburden) - over the entire life cycle of products to give them value for the customer, the local community, and our employees.
The first step is using management systems for occupational health and safety, quality, environment and other aspects as development and promotional tools to create Smart Processes that eliminate the three M's; the second, taking usage and final disposal into due consideration, reducing the environmental impact to create Smart Design. These key concepts of Smart Processes and Smart Design lie behind TAIYO YUDEN Group's approach to developing Smart Products.

Efforts in Product Assessment

The magnitude of a product's impact on the environment is mostly decided at the product planning and design stages. TAIYO YUDEN Group's Product Assessment Rules call for a product assessment evaluating, at all steps from product development and design right up until disposal, such issues as occupational health and safety considerations and the effects that the product will have on the environment.
There are three evaluations from planning and development through to mass production in the product assessment. The first, during planning and development, is an evaluation based on investigation results of the materials used, analysis results of the past, and other research. The second, during test planning, is an evaluation of process design and development. The third is an evaluation performed at the mass production trial stage.

Measures against Substances that Place Environmental Burden

In the Taiyo Yuden Group, all the products shipped in June 2014 and later conform to RoHS Directive (EU) 2015/863. Product information on the TAIYO YUDEN website specifies whether a product complies with the RoHS/RoHS2 Directive. We are also in compliance with the REACH Directive in accordance with the law. Going forward, we will also disclose SVHC (chemical substances designated as "of very high concern" in Europe) and file and disclose data about them.

Promoting Green Procurement

To realize the overriding goal of our environmental preservation activities—supplying products with less environmental impact—we have established "Green Purchase Standard" seeking customer understanding and, at the same time, giving priority to procuring materials and parts with lower environmental impacts.

Green Purchase Standard

Green Purchase Standard Overview

To provide products with low environmental impact, it is essential to choose parts, materials, and subsidiary materials that comprise the product based on their low environmental effects before and during the course of manufacturing. A proactive stance toward environmental conservation on the part of suppliers is also an important criterion for procurement.

  1. Parts, materials and subsidiary materials must not contain designated chemicals.
  2. The supplier must have established an environmental management system (either ISO14001 or its own) and set up an environmental preservation structure.

Applying Green Purchase Standard

We evaluate suppliers based on our green purchase standard and the data that they supply on their environmental preservation systems and the environmental impact of their products.
Based on this result as well as comprehensive evaluation including price and quality, we approve suppliers.
The new supplier approval rate in FY2022 was 100% (13 out of 13 companies).

Product Evaluation Standard (1)

We check products' chemical content by having suppliers provide RoHS compliance certificates, measurement data, ingredient tables, and other documentation at regularly scheduled intervals.

Supplier Evaluation Standard (2)

At the start of a business relationship and at regularly scheduled intervals thereafter, suppliers must conduct their own audits or submit to our on-site evaluations with regard to their environmental preservation structure.