Quality Assurance

  Guided by a key component of its overarching philosophy, the Yamaha Group engages in Customer-Oriented and Quality-Conscious Management. In its efforts to fully satisfy its customers, the Group offers quality products and services that incorporate new and traditional technologies as well as refined creativity and artistry.

  The Yamaha Group has out in place a Group-wide quality management system to ensure the production of high quality products. Under this system, quality policies and targets as well as important quality-related measures are deliberated by the Quality Committee and then issued from the president to operating divisions.

  Each business division sets its own divisional targets in line with the aforementioned quality policies and objectives. All production bases both inside and outside Japan follow ISO 9001 international standards for quality management systems and engage in activities designed to achieve quality targets.

  The Quality Assurance Division audits the quality targets as well as the status of achievement based on monthly quality reports submitted by each business division.

  The Quality Management Representative Conference, which comprises officers in charge of quality management from each business and sales division, disseminates Company-wide details of quality policies, targets and important quality-related measures. The conference also conducts joint research with business divisions on improvement case studies.

  The Quality Assurance Division audits whether the quality assurance systems of each business division and the quality of products meet the standard to which Yamaha aspires. The results of these audits are taken into account in improving the Company-wide quality management system. Business divisions instruct and audit the factories both inside and outside Japan over which they have control. Every effort is made to further enhance product quality.

  As of March 31, 2012, the Yamaha Group had acquired certification under the ISO 9001 international standard for quality management systems at 28 business divisions in Japan and overseas.

  In order to develop human resources capable of contributing to improvements in quality, the Yamaha Group's personnel training system is comprised of expert training related to “quality assurance,” as well as training tailored to individual job positions. The goals of this system are to raise awareness and enhance skills with respect to quality management. The Group offers courses covering a wide range of topics including quality engineering, FMEA and FTA^*1. Over a four-year period a cumulative total of 600 employees have attended these courses.

• *1 "FMEA: Failure Mode and Effect Analysis
  FTA: Fault Tree Analysis
  Methods of systematically analyzing potential malfunctions and defects in products and other items