Quality Management

In a section titled "Quality and Safety of Products and Services," the Kawasaki Group Code of Conduct states that we must provide high-performance, high-quality, and safe products and services. Based on our awareness that ensuring that customers can use our products and services with confidence is a key management issue, we are working to improve management quality by furthering quality assurance activities whose objective is to improve both product quality and safety. In conjunction with this, we also implement Total Quality Management (TQM) and continue with organizational and structural improvements to operational processes and systems.

Our Group recognizes that creating new value contributing to people’s affluent lives and the future of the global environment is our social responsibility. We also view supplying products and services with customer-satisfying quality as one of the Group’s management principles relating to business continuity. Based on such thinking, in 2021 we established the Kawasaki Group Policy on Quality Management, which promotes effective and efficient activities throughout the entire Group toward the creation of customer value.

The Kawasaki Group

We have established a TQM Department within the Head Office’s Corporate Planning Division for promoting TQM throughout the Company. To improve management quality, the Department formulates a company-wide TQM activity policy and promotion plan. After ascertaining the implementation status of those initiatives and the outcomes achieved, it also encourages quality improvements to products and operations, enhancements to organizational management, and adherence to continuous improvement through, for example, policy management, daily management, process assurance, and human resources training. Furthermore, with regard to quality assurance activities to ensure product safety and quality, it works to improve the quality of operational processes related to products and services. As measures for strengthening the systems centered around each business segment for assuring product quality, in April 2026 we established a Corporate Quality Assurance Management Group at the Head Office. To resolve quality-related problems across the Company, it is moving forward on enhancing quality-assurance functions throughout the Company and on establishing governance systems. This Group formulates a Company-wide quality assurance activity policy and plan, and ascertains the implementation status of that plan and its positive outcomes. It also implements across the Company quality assurance activities to ensure and improve product quality. These activities include maintaining and improving quality assurance systems, strengthening responses to serious quality issues, and both preventing the recurrence of those problems and promoting the horizontal deployment of those responses. Each business segment as well engages in TQM activities tailored to the unique features of each business based on Company-wide policy and tackles such matters as improvements to the quality of products and operations, enhancing organizational management, continual activities for improvement and innovation themes, and human resource development. Each segment has also established a department responsible for quality assurance and promotes quality assurance and quality control measures in line with the characteristics of each business, including the formulation of quality assurance policies and promotion plans.

Hiroshi Nakatani, Representative Director, and Senior Corporate Executive Officer (Responsible for TQM and Quality Assurance)

Our Company engages in TQM with the objectives of strengthening our organizational base and enhancing corporate value on a sustainable basis. In every segment and at all levels, based on the ideas of TQM we seek to transform business and improve management quality by encouraging organizational, structural, and continual improvements and innovation of operational processes and systems.

CX: Corporate Transformation

We continuously implement TQM training for all employees at each level tailored to their positions, and TQM training for each area, such as daily management and policy management. We are also working to deepen the understanding of TQM among everyone from new hires to senior management through our own training materials and education provided by outside instructors. Furthermore, based on evaluations of TQM levels, by using common indicators to quantitatively assess the state of TQM at Head Office divisions and in all business segments, we clarify those points for improvement and those which are satisfactory and link these findings to TQM tailored to the features of each division.

We have built a system that, for each business segment and product group, clarifies roles related to quality assurance at each stage, from product contracting, development, and design to after-delivery service, and enables us to provide safe and excellent products and appropriate services that satisfy customers. We are engaged in maintaining and improving product safety and quality. These efforts include ascertaining customer requirements, planning and developing products, setting standards and specifications, ensuring the required quality in the design, building quality into production and procurement, collecting and analyzing quality information after delivery, conducting quality audits, and providing education and raising awareness.

Each business segment carries out reviews at each stage of the management process described above to confirm from multiple angles conformance with customer requirements, product specifications, and legal and regulatory requirements. Each is also working to prevent quality defects by identifying potential risks and devising countermeasures. Furthermore, at the manufacturing stage, each conducts in-process inspections and inspections upon completion and strives to prevent any defects from making their way to our customers.

To verify the conformity of our quality management system with standards and its effectiveness, we implement internal quality audits on our business segments with the quality assurance department of each segment serving as the secretariat. For nonconformities, items requiring improvement, and issues detected in audits, we report them to the company president, who serves as the top management, and to the General Manager of the Business Division. Following that, each business segment makes corrections and improvements, after which we verify the effectiveness.

The Kawasaki Group obtains ISO 9001 certification at the level of business segments or Group companies, with approximately 70% of domestic and overseas production sites having obtained this certification.

In each business segment and for each product group, we conduct education for employees involved in manufacturing on quality and product safety based on product characteristics, thereby endeavoring to improve quality and ensure product safety.

We monitor the status of product quality nonconformity and incidents, ensuring that appropriate countermeasures are being taken and reflecting the results in efforts to enhance our quality management systems. Additionally, through contact points in each business segment, we identify feedback and inquiries regarding nonconformity, complaints, and incidents that we receive from customers, and take the necessary actions. In the event of quality nonconformity or incidents with a grave impact on our customers or on society, or serious incidents that could significantly undermine trust in the Group, these are reported promptly to both the President and the supervisory departments at Head Office. Such defects and incidents are also shared with the relevant departments, with notifications made to the competent authorities and information disclosed.

Our Group handles a diverse range of product businesses. Among these, Kawasaki Motors, which manufactures and sells motorcycles and other B-to-C products, complies with the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates and makes prompt decisions on whether to conduct recalls while exchanging information with the authorities. When conducting product recalls, in addition to promptly disclosing associated information over its website and through other means, Kawasaki Motors informs customers who purchased the product in question of inspections or repairs via the likes of direct mail.