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A Variety of Activities That Sustain “Dreams” and “Inspiration” |
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As a company tasked with delivering “Dreams” and “Inspiration” to people, BANDAI is committed to ensuring that all our products are safe and of the highest quality. Our guiding principle here is to provide customers worldwide with satisfying, trustworthy products by prioritizing safety and reliability. In following this principle we have consistently set internal safety standards across all business categories that go beyond governmental regulations and standards set by industry, trade, and other external groups. We also comply with the safety standards of foreign markets such as Europe and the United States. In addition, we constantly monitor changes in the law and public opinion and re-evaluate our standards accordingly.
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Prioritizing Safety in Product Design and Material Selection |
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| Child Monitor studies |
Each year, BANDAI develops over 7,000 new products in a wide variety of categories. We apply a set of safety and quality standards to the design and materials selection of individual products, depending on specific product characteristics and a wide range of customer needs. For example, to prevent injuries we are obliged to ensure that pointed parts are rounded off and that neck straps of a certain length are designed to release when a specified strain is placed on them. In addition, we regularly conduct “Child Monitor” studies, maintaining up-to-date data on children's body measurements and motor skills, which serve as the basic criteria for deciding product size and weight during design. |
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Rigorous, Wide-ranging Inspections |
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| Dropping toys for shock testing |
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BANDAI uses product safety and strength/durability testing protocols that cover approximately 350 items. For each product, we select a set of appropriate inspection items depending on the specific product characteristics. For example, for the Sentai Gattai Robot (Megazord) series, we use an exhaustive inspection protocol involving more than 200 tests, inspections, and checks to ensure product quality from multiple perspectives. Furthermore, our materials safety standard is comprised of over 20 separate items. Here, in addition to receiving certificates of compliance from external inspection agencies, we conduct in-house analysis and measurement of lead and other heavy metals using X-ray fluorescence, and of the plasticizer content of synthetic resins using a Fourier Transform Infra-Red Spectroscope (FT-IR).
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| Materials testing using X-ray fluorescence |
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Ensuring Safety During Manufacturing |
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| Quality control activities at a plant |
The manufacturing of BANDAI products is mostly outsourced to foreign affiliated manufacturers. BANDAI (SHENZHEN) CO., LTD. in Shenzhen, China is an important production management base for the Toys and Hobby business where quality control, quality inspection, and other safety tests are conducted. To enhance quality assurance activities we are improving relevant data collection and communication, strengthening the inspection system, and providing a wide range of staff educational programs, while at the same time sharing information about production quality issues. |
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The BANDAI Code of Conduct |
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| A Code of Conduct audit |
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In order to maintain an appropriate working environment at all our factories around the world, BANDAI published a Code of Conduct in 1998. Currently, the working conditions at each of BANDAI's over 200 affiliate manufacturers around the world are audited by independent entities using a checklist based on the Code of Conduct. We have also produced a Bandai Code of Conduct Manual and have distributed this to all suppliers to ensure that they thoroughly understand the philosophy behind our policies as well as the evaluation criteria. |
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Customer Service Center Measures |
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| The Customer Service Center |
Our Customer Service Center plays the important role of facilitating direct communication with customers. To help us respond quickly to the 40,000-50,000 calls that we receive every month, we keep a record of customer comments and suggestions in a database, taking special care to protect personal information. In addition to enabling appropriate and thorough responses to customers, the accumulated information is used in product development and ultimately leads to increased customer satisfaction.
In July 2010, we adopted the ISO 10002 complaints handling management system, with the goal of further improving our responsiveness to customers. |
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Universal Design |
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| An example of packaging that allows easy product removal |
BANDAI aims to design products to enable as many people as possible to use them with ease. From packaging that allows easier removal of products to color improvements that make it easy for people to read packaging regardless of how well they distinguish colors, we have added numerous improvements to improve the usability of our products from a universal design perspective.
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Universal design is an approach to designing that emphasizes enabling as many people as possible to use a product or service regardless of any disabilities they might have. |
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Home > About Company > Safety and Quality
