Strengthening Monozukuri

Since our founding, the Hitachi Group has carried on a tradition of "quality first" monozukuri *1. At Hitachi, we approach monozukuri from the customer's perspective, holistically applying a wide range of technologies, know-how, and management skills to the total process-from product development and design to production, sales, and service. However, when broken turbine blades were discovered in a nuclear power station in Japan in June 2006, we established the Supervisory Office for Monozukuri under the president the following September to further strengthen monozukuri capabilities and to restore customer confidence.

Six Committees Committed to Strengthening Core Technologies

The Supervisory Office for Monozukuri, with six committees, strategically introduces the latest simulation technology and specialized personnel. At the same time, it works to strengthen existing development and design processes, production technology, and quality assurance, then promotes these improvements throughout the Hitachi Group as part of a Group-wide campaign. The two fundamental principles that support quality and reliability in monozukuri are technical capability and managerial expertise.
Committee 1 strengthens development and design; Committee 3 improves quality and reliability based on the Hitachi founding spirit; and Committee 4 standardizes and makes knowledge about monozukuri widely available (information on previous accidents or failures, expertise, technology, and know-how).
For enhancing managerial expertise, Committee 2 strengthens risk and project management, Committee 5 works on enhancing monozukuri competence, which forms the bedrock of management, and Committee 6 promotes human resource development.
Every committee simultaneously works to enhance monozukuri and on-site skills by continually sharing the results of its activities with the Customers and Hitachi "Thinking and acting from the perspective of our customers." This is the basic philosophy behind all the corporate activities of the Hitachi Group. Customer satisfaction and providing highly reliable products and services are the top priorities. company's business divisions and rigorously applying the PDCA*2 process.

Committees of the Supervisory Office for Monozukuri and Their Activitieslink to an enlarged view(open in new window)

*1

monozukuri
Monozukuri is a Japanese term combining two words-mono meaning product and zukuri meaning manufacturing. Hitachi's monozukuri represents our total manufacturing solution, which includes software and hardware know-how and development expertise. As such, Hitachi's monozukuri provides maximum value for customers by providing end-to-end planning, design, manufacturing and quality control for every product.

*2

PDCA
Plan-Do-Check-Action
A system for managing an organization in a continuous way by approaching the four steps of Plan-Do-Check-Action as a single process.

*3

PM
Project Management
A method of managing the progress of a project as a whole while coordinating staff, funds, equipment, materials, scheduling, etc.