Quality Assurance

Achieving Customer Trust and Satisfaction by Delivering

Guided by shared concepts and rules, the Yokogawa Group implements quality management on a daily basis to deliver products and services that meet customer expectations. Every year, the Group establishes quality targets and measures in the Yokogawa Group Quality Plan and implements quality activities on the basis of this plan to ensure high quality.

The basic quality policy

1. Quality management is carried out in order to implement customer focus based on "Quality First," which is the spirit of foundation, and "Healthy and Profitable Management" through improvements in management quality.
2. Products that meet statutory and regulatory requirements as well as customer requirements are supplied.
3. Appropriate quality management systems conforming to the International Standard ISO 9001 requirements are established and implemented. In addition, the effectiveness of those systems is continually improved.
4. Customer requirements are fulfilled and customer satisfaction is increased through the results of quality activities in all organizations and personnel. For this purpose, each employee must feel that the quality of his or her work has a direct bearing on product quality, and that the company believes in "Quality First".
5. The head of each organization is responsible for the quality of the relevant businesses. The responsibilities include ensuring that adequate resources are made available.

Customer Satisfaction and Quality

Yokogawa provides high-quality products and solutions that satisfy our customers. This is built upon the Quality First founding spirit that we have preserved for over 100 years. Our quality management consists of three basic elements: Quality  Assurance (QA), Quality Improvement (QI), and Quality mind (the quality-first mindset) (Qm).

Quality Assurance (QA)
Continually seeking to provide better products to customers based on the philosophy of quality being the highest priority.

Quality Improvement (QI)
Establishing a system to provide quality products and services.

Quality mind (the quality-first mindset) (Qm)
Each and every employee having the quality-first mindset that is the Yokogawa Group’s founding spirit.

Yokogawa believes that the customer expectations can only be met and long-lasting relationship built when all of these elements are engaged. We consider the principle of “Quality First” is essential for maintaining high levels of quality. Therefore, all employees across the Yokogawa Group incorporate quality in each operation, based on group-wide rules and an awareness of the importance of quality.

Quality Assurance Activities

Since its founding, Yokogawa has built quality management systems into each process from development, planning, design, and manufacturing to sales and service, in order to deliver products and solutions that contribute to customer satisfaction.
Yokogawa first obtained ISO 9001 certification in 1992, and its major Group companies both in Japan and overseas have also acquired the certification. For product supports, specialists deal with the issues and problems with products that are encountered by customers.
Yokogawa has a service system featuring its Global Response Center that continually watches over customer equipment globally to ensure the equipment’s safety.
Yokogawa also ensures the traceability of measurement instruments as part of its quality assurance system.
Yokogawa is an enterprise registered with Japan Calibration Service System (JCSS) for electricity, pressure, flowrate, and time.

Yokogawa QHSE* Month

In 1960 in Japan, November was set as Quality Month by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, the Japanese Standards Association, the Japan Productivity Center, and the Japan Management Association. Yokogawa has continuously engaged in related activities during Quality Month.
Starting in 2018, we engage in an array of activities within the Group in November every year, having added occupational health and safety and environmental conservation, which are the foundation of management, to quality and renamed the month Yokogawa QHSE Month.
To instill the importance of quality, occupational safety and health, and environmental conservation in the minds of all employees, we have put up QHSE Month posters designed by an employee of a Group company. In addition to the mindset of “Quality First”, we convey the thoughts of senior management regarding occupational safety and health, and environmental conservation to the employees of the Group in a QHSE Month message.

*QHSE: Quality, Health, Safety and Environment

 

Yokogawa QA Booklet and Awareness Notebook to prevent recurrence

To maintain and improve quality, Yokogawa has prepared a QA Booklet that explains the attitude that is necessary during work every day in easy-to-understand terms. Workers are expected to maintain the mindset of “Quality First” by carrying this booklet with them wherever they go. In addition, we have created a new collection of Awareness Notebook to prevent recurrence for manufacturing workers, which is deployed at manufacturing sites as an aid for maintaining awareness.
These have been translated into five languages to facilitate deployment across the Group.

 

 

 

QHSE Management Maturity Assessment

Since 2018, Yokogawa has set its own numerical criteria to assess the maturity level of QHSE management system at major group companies in Japan and overseas. The purpose is to identify issues related to the establishment and operation of quality, occupational health and safety, and environmental management system in the Yokogawa Group, and to promote continuous improvement.
Since 2022, Yokogawa has continued its assessment by adding perspectives such as strengthening of the governance in each Group company to our criteria.
Every year, we set our Group target of improving the maturity score by 5% compared to the previous fiscal year, and each Group company achieves the target by improving the maturity level through the promotion of improvement measures suggested in the assessment and their voluntary activities.