3. New Challenges
2017-2024
(1) The Largest Quality Issue in Our History
- 2019
- We faced the largest quality issue in our history, a serious situation that shook the very foundation of our reputation as “DENSO Quality.” We immediately launched an intensive effort to restore trust, focusing on design and manufacturing areas.
Our financial results for the fiscal year 2019 saw an approximately 80% reduction in profits. While the decline in automobile production due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic played a role, the primary reason for the profit reduction was the over 200-billion-yen provision for quality-related costs. The impact of addressing the quality issue did not end within that fiscal year; additional costs were recorded in the following year as well.
The quality issue was related to fuel pumps. These products were installed in various models of multiple car manufacturers and were exported not only domestically but also internationally.
It was the largest quality issue in the history of our company, severely undermining the reliability of “DENSO Quality,” our hallmark. Quality is the lifeline of our management. To recover from this situation as quickly as possible, we set “Restart of DENSO Quality” as the key theme of our quality policy for the fiscal year 2020. We mobilized the entire company to focus intensively on “solidifying the foundation for trust recovery” and “improving design and manufacturing quality.”
- Deep DiveImproving Design Quality
- To enhance “design quality,” we systematically advanced automation and labor-saving measures by implementing consistent tools from the upstream to the downstream stages of development. This was in response to the increasing scale and complexity, as well as the growing volume of software development year by year. Furthermore, we mandated the verification of adequate design margins for new products, ensuring that the relationship between environmental stresses and product durability was thoroughly assessed.
- Deep DiveImproving Manufacturing Quality
- To enhance “manufacturing quality,” we continuously improved process assurance and systematically advanced activities to improve process reliability, extending these improvements all the way to on-site operations. Additionally, we developed a lot traceability system to minimize the inconvenience to car manufacturers in the unlikely event of a defect reaching them.
Various initiatives were strongly promoted from both design and manufacturing, as well as hardware and software perspectives. However, to truly ensure “DENSO Quality” it was necessary to go a step further and thoroughly reform our corporate structure to be resilient and capable of adapting to any environmental changes while continuously providing new value.
To materialize this reform, we formulated “Reborn21” in 2020 (refer to the next section). The efforts for the “Restart of DENSO Quality” were expanded company-wide, with an added focus on strengthening our corporate structure.