A Business Foundation that Supports Sustainable Growth

Primary Initiatives

Eliminating violations of competition laws is among our top priorities

Policies for Preventing Bribery and Corrupt Practices

for regaining trust, and so Hitachi will continue its efforts to prevent thePreventing bribery and corrupt practices is a big challenge for arecurrence of any such incident.

company today. In 2008 Hitachi established rules against bribery andcorruption for the HGCP along with guidelines indicating specificTax Compliance Initiatives

spending thresholds for entertainment, gifts, and other arrangements

To ensure risk management for taxation in response to globalization,provided to public officials. We have striven to ensure strict compliance

Hitachi follows relevant tax-related regulations applicable to the Group

with these rules. In 2016 we introduced a policy banning facilitation

as a whole as well as rules for transfer pricing management. We also

payments, which had not been explicitly regulated, along with revisions

manage transfer pricing in accordance with the OECD Transfer Pricing

including clarification of due diligence procedures for business

Guidelines and the laws and regulations on transfer pricing in eachpartners.

country or region where Group companies are located.

Preventing Violations of Competition Law

Violations of Laws and Regulations

Hitachi engages in business based on the principles of conformance

In fiscal 2018, there were no incidents in which Hitachi violated or waswith the law and business ethics and fair and open competition, whilepenalized under laws or regulations regarding bribery or corrupt

at the same time ensuring that we comply with the HGCP’s rules

practices and competition.

concerning competition law and other related business standards andguidelines. In 2017, to enhance awareness of ethical principles andpractices globally, we created a global version of our standards
regarding contact with competitors based on the standards originallyprepared for use in Japan. We have been providing a collection of casestudies for workplace discussion to Group companies since 2012, andin 2018 we added case studies about competition law in threelanguages, Japanese, English, and Chinese, to raise employee
awareness.

Quality Assurance
Thorough Implementation of Quality Assurance
Providing products and services that our customers can use with confidence, along with meeting the requirements and quality standards of our customers inorder to achieve this, are important values shared by all our employees and codified in the Hitachi Group Codes of Conduct. To ensure that quality andreliability are maintained, we are strengthening our quality assurance activities from the perspectives of organization and management, technology, andhuman resources in every process—from planning and development to design, manufacturing, delivery, and maintenance.

Quality Assurance Initiatives
Maintaining the values of “Harmony”, “Sincerity”, and “Pioneering Spirit“that comprise the Hitachi Founding Spirit, as well as adhering to“Basics and Ethics” and “Putting Right and Wrong before Profits andbut also thoroughly discussing the process, framework, and motivating
factors leading up to occurrence, along with ways to prevent
reoccurrence, in order to improve our product reliability and customer
satisfaction.

Losses”, we place great emphasis on “Sincerity” in quality assurance
activities as part of earning trust in our products.

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Framework for Quality Assurance

One integral aspect of this is our unique and longstanding practice ofTo ensure full control over quality governance, we have separated theochibo hiroi which means “gleaning” in English and involves learning

quality assurance division from the manufacturing division in every

from failure to further develop our technologies. When an incident

business unit (BU) and Group company, creating a framework foroccurs, our executive officers take the lead in examining things fromactivity in which our customers’ safety and trust are the top priorities.

the customer’s perspective, not only investigating the technical causes

Since fiscal 2018, in order to strengthen this framework further, weHitachi Integrated Report 2019

have reinforced the report lines from BU and Group company quality

Quality and Reliability Education

assurance divisions to the quality assurance division at our head office,

We conduct field-specific technical lectures for engineers engaged in

independent from all business divisions, establishing systems for closemonozukuri craftsmanship at a range of levels from beginner toinformation sharing between the two. We have also strengthened

expert.

governance by giving greater authority to the quality assurance divisionat our head office.

Each business unit also conducts specialized technical courses
regarding manufacturing, quality assurance, and maintenance attheir quality assurance training centers.

Accident Prevention Activities
Under our approach of making prevention the duty of quality

Global Quality Assurance Personnel Training in Asia

assurance, we are working beyond recurrence prevention and striving

We undertake personnel training as part of maintaining Hitachi’s

towards preventing accidents from occurring in the first place.

global quality standards. In China and Thailand, where many of the

Closely following the changes in a range of business activities, weGroup’s manufacturing sites are concentrated, we organize

anticipate quality issues on the horizon across the entire Group andeducational seminars aimed at improving our quality management

plan our quality activities accordingly.

technology. We also host conferences for quality assurance

As a part of these activities, we aim to increase trust in our embedded
software even further by bringing the software development

managers to raise quality awareness regarding Hitachi’s monozukuri
craftsmanship, and to share information and best practices.

capabilities and expertise in strengthening trust of our solutions
divisions to our product divisions (embedded software development
divisions).
Furthermore, we are promoting the digitalization of test andinspection data and working to construct processes for acquiring,assessing and reporting on this data without manual intervention.
Complying with Technical Laws
We have created guidelines for assessment of technical laws andquality assurance systems, sharing them throughout the Group. The
guidelines include information on the two themes of (1) clarifying
product-specific laws (the product-specific laws map) and(2) regulatory compliance activities and continuous improvement ofprocesses, based on our product compliance management system.
Thorough Risk Assessment
We conduct product safety risk assessment as well as testing worstcase scenarios—for example, deliberately setting a fire inside a
consumer appliance to confirm that the fire will not spread outside it.
Handling Product Accidents
When a product accident occurs, the division responsible acts swiftly
to resolve the problem and ensure absolute safety from thecustomer’s perspective. For an especially severe accident, we reportto government agencies in line with legal requirements and publish theincident information on our website and through other channels. At
the same time, we promptly submit a status report to top
management, ensuring fast and appropriate action at all companies
across the Group.
When we determine that retroactive action is necessary, we notify
customers via newspaper advertising and websites in order to carryout the necessary repair or replacement program.

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