Third-party Opinion
In this section last year, I stated that the lack of a strong scenario depicting how the Minebea Group will make its vision and policies a reality was almost inevitable, given the major shift in content from the Minebea Group Environmental Report to your CSR Report last year. At the same time, I predicted that in the next report, for 2011, this temporary issue would be solved, and that a new CSR management direction for the Minebea Group would likely be clearly laid out. This new report betrays that prediction in a positive way. Throughout this report, the Minebea Group's CSR management is depicted as extremely systematic, and in a far more convincing manner than I had anticipated.
The foremost example of this is the two special features that appear early in the report. The first special feature, covering the development of energy-efficient motors, dealt with a timely topic and demonstrated your enthusiasm for contributing to society through technology as well as your attention to developing younger engineers. The second special feature detailed the many diligent efforts carried out by the Minebea Group's largest production facility, NMB-Minebea Thai, with respect to the environment and society and in close association with the local community. Both of these excellent cases spoke eloquently of the Minebea Group's CSR. I thought both special features were wonderful and showed the essence of "manufacturing with sincerity" in a concrete way.
In addition, a great step forward for the current report was the organic manner in which your newly-established CSR goals connected the Minebea Group's Five Principles, which support the basis of your management; your basic CSR policies and initiative policies; and the individual reports that followed. This organic connection will clarify the key performance indicators (KPI) that the Minebea Group is considering in each area, and it made your CSR management easy to understand throughout the report.
In addition, the charts and figures are generally simpler, making the content easy to understand at a glance. I believe this is also consistent with the aforementioned change. By putting forth your CSR goals, you have enlarged the number of stakeholders, your intended readers, that you can expect to reach.
Going forward, I plan to pay close attention to how your medium- and long-term CSR goals are laid out by President Kainuma in his Top Commitment section at the beginning of future reports. I believe this will lead you to delve deeply into the Minebea Group's social mission of "reliably supplying high-quality, high value-added products," which has taken on new importance in view of the recent great earthquake. Examples of initiatives I would hope to see include 1) conforming the definition of "high-quality, high value-added" to your standards for green products and making visible the social benefit (that is, the impact of environmental functionality) of Minebea Group products, and 2) in terms of "reliable supply," dealing with resource risk—exemplified by the "conflict resources" President Kainuma touched on in his message—as a supply chain CSR issue.
The Minebea Group has declared its commitment to growing with local communities. This is precisely why I have even greater expectations, given the major step forward that this year's CSR report represents, that you will take an even wider circle of stakeholders into account in your future CSR management.
Keisuke Takegahara
After graduation from Hitotsubashi University Faculty of Law, Mr. Takegahara joined the Japan Development Bank (now the Development Bank of Japan, Inc.). He assumed his present post following stints in the Bank's Representative Office in Germany, within the Bank's Research Department and Policy Planning Department, and as section head of the Office for Corporate Social Responsibility of the Department for Public Sector Solutions. Mr. Takegahara is also a member of several councils, including the Central Environment Council's Expert Committee for a Virtuous Circle for Environment and Economy (General Policy Subcommittee), and the Japanese Ministry of the Environment's Survey on Environment Business Market Size and Employment Size (Deliberative Committee on Target Industries and Services).
On Receiving a Third-party Opinion
Thank you very much for your valuable comments on this CSR report for FY2011.
This fiscal year's CSR report, the second which we have issued annually, includes two special features. I am pleased to see that you regard these sections of the report as communicating the Minebea Group's view of CSR.
At the same time, the lack of a strong overall scenario depicting how we will make our vision and policies a reality over the medium to long term, which you pointed out, is something we recognize must be addressed going forward. Although we have established single-year goals, we will have to defer medium- and long-term goals to our FY2012 report, and in this respect we cannot help but acknowledge our limitations.
We recognize that creating a PDCA promotion structure for CSR management will be an important element in setting medium- and long-term CSR goals and starting to manage them in FY2012. This is one of our FY2011 goals. Keeping in mind our mission of "reliably supplying high-quality, high value-added products," we will strive to achieve our FY2011 goals, and using those achievements as a platform, we will work toward the establishment of medium- and long-term CSR goals.
We will continue striving to make our CSR reports easy to read and understand. Moreover, based on your advice, we will undertake to improve our CSR initiatives and work to take them to the next level.
