Quality / Customer Satisfaction

To gain customer trust and improve customer satisfaction, based on its Quality Philosophy and Quality Slogan, the Sharp Group constantly strives to respond to customer needs and demands by providing products and services that are safe, high quality, and reliable.

Under the executive managing officer in charge of quality in the Sharp Group, the Quality Promotion Office leads governance and supports related efforts, and the Group has a system in place for each business unit and affiliate to autonomously conduct its business.

To enable it to conduct a variety of quality assurance activities in all stages of the manufacturing cycle, including planning, design, procurement, production, assessment, and after-sales, the Sharp Group established the Sharp Corporation Standard based on the ISO 9001 international quality management standard. Stipulating systems and methods necessary for quality assurance, the Sharp Corporation Standard is strictly adhered to by all Sharp sites in Japan and other countries, and by consolidated subsidiaries carrying out design, production, and sales.

Through ongoing revision and implementation of the standard, all employees—in product planning, design, production, sales, and after-sales service—know exactly the level of quality they should be guaranteeing customers in Sharp’s continuous efforts to improve quality.

ISO 9001 certification status as of March 31, 2022
• 38 of 39 sites are certified, for a certification rate of 97.4%

In line with the Quality Policy stipulated in Sharp Corporation’s company rules (Quality Assurance Basic Rules), the Sharp Group makes and implements quality plans aimed at achieving the quality targets it has set.

The Sharp Group established the Quality Engineering Committee as a way to advance quality technologies. The Committee decides policies and sets fiscal-year targets related to quality issues arising in new products. It also leads company-wide research and improvement efforts among business units to assure quality in new business areas such as the 8K+5G ecosystem, AIoT*1, and digital healthcare. The Committee is made up of heads of business units and subsidiaries and is chaired by the Sharp executive managing officer in charge of quality.

Within the Quality Engineering Committee are Expert Subcommittees made up of experts from the various business units. These Expert Subcommittees work towards prompt solutions to issues that concern multiple business units or the entire company.

Based on its Quality Philosophy, Sharp works to foster quality thinking and boost quality-related techniques by carrying out systematic quality-related education with the aim of making products that customers can use with safety and peace of mind.

In particular, the company is stepping up basic training through programs that allow young employees (in their first four years with the company) to gradually acquire quality-related techniques.

Keenly aware that product safety assurance is the most important aspect of a company’s business and one of its social responsibilities, Sharp strives to provide customers with safety and peace of mind. It does this by prioritizing the safety of the products it manufactures and sells and by making safety-related information public. To this end, the company has formulated voluntary action guidelines on product safety in efforts to earn an even higher level of trust from society.

Sharp strives to ensure its products are safe and to constantly raise levels of safety. Besides abiding by laws and regulations of countries and obtaining safety certifications through activities such as factory audits by third parties, the company utilizes its own risk-assessment-based safety standards. To ensure safety even in cases where unforeseen defects arise, these in-house safety standards stipulate items like flame-retardant construction and testing for abnormal conditions. These standards are revised as needed and are taught to all relevant employees in design, quality, and other divisions so that they are understood and followed thoroughly.

Since fiscal 2020, Sharp has been using e-learning material developed exclusively for the company to expand the practice of risk assessment related to product safety. Sharp is enhancing its internal training with this material, along with a new upskilling course. It is hoped these initiatives will help employees embrace the concept of risk assessment more deeply and motivate them to develop safer products.

Sharp will continue to step up efforts to promptly respond to social changes and legal revisions regarding product safety so that customers can use Sharp products with peace of mind.

Products connected to networks are exposed to growing risks as information technology advances and the value of information they handle increases. They are at a risk of cyber-attack taking advantage of their vulnerabilities, which can result in information leakage or a hijacking of the device being hacked. Security measures once considered adequate are now seen as insufficient, owing to technological advances and other factors. Around the world, there is an urgent and growing need to improve legislation on product security.

Such a situation has been prompting Sharp to act to ensure that customers can use its products without worries. We have established teams and reporting lines dedicated to enhancing product security, along with the rules to be followed at the stages of planning, developing, operating, and maintaining products. We also gather vulnerability information and share it internally, as well as train employees thoroughly, to ensure the quality of our product security continuously.

We are expecting a future in which standalone systems are interconnected with one another, perhaps creating added vulnerabilities. To prepare for such a future, we have adopted security by design, a concept that intends to build in security from early stages before design. This approach to product development is shared throughout the organization.

Sharp practices user-centered design (UCD) in order to provide products that customers find easier to use.

UCD is a concept—as outlined in the international ISO 9241-210 standard—to provide products and services that satisfy customers by seeing things from their perspective, understanding their needs, and reflecting them in product design. Sharp has its own UCD Basic Policy and the Eight Principles of UCD based on this concept and shares them across the Sharp Group. Sharp investigates customers’ latent dissatisfaction and needs as part of its product development process and reflects those findings in the specifications and design of its products. By repeatedly going through evaluations and improvements, Sharp is bringing forth products and services that customers find easy to use and attractive.

In user-centered design (UCD), Sharp collects customer feedback on ease of use through various methods and applies it to product design.

Through usability tests (observing how people actually use Sharp products), questionnaires, interviews, and opinions gathered from customers during Customer Assistance Center phone calls and repair visits, anonymous information from customers is compiled and shared among Sharp development personnel, who put it to use in new product design.

For in-person information gathering such as usability tests, strict measures are taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19. If necessary, these activities are carried out online using web conferencing systems.

In line with the aforementioned UCD Basic Policy, Sharp also takes into consideration universal design (UD). Universal design is a philosophy for building products, information, and environments so that they can be used by many more customers—regardless of things like nationality, age, gender, or disability. Sharp strives to develop products and services that can be used comfortably by as many people as possible by conducting UD evaluations and surveys of mainly home appliances and digital multifunction printers (MFPs).

As of June 2022, 18 models of Sharp home appliance products support the UD considerations listed on the website of the Association for Electric Home Appliances in Japan.

To continue the aforementioned activities company-wide, Sharp works to foster human resources through training. Major education activities include introduction to universal design (e-learning) to impart the understanding and acquisition of basic UD knowledge, UD experience learning, in which employees see firsthand what it’s like to be physically disabled so that they can know how to make products more accessible, and a usability training system for specialized education.

UD experience learning is usually conducted in person in a group, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a web conferencing system was utilized for online classes in which participants used smartphone apps for the learning material.

Accessibility is the concept of making products and services so that they can easily be used by people who are in some way limited in their physical functions; for example, senior citizens and the physically disabled. Under U.S. federal law*1, federal agencies purchasing equipment and services are obligated to choose those that are accessible to everyone, including the physically disabled. For Sharp digital MFPs and other products, assessment results of accessibility standards stipulated by federal law are compiled on a product evaluation sheet (VPAT*2), which is disclosed on the website of Sharp Electronics Corporation (SEC), Sharp’s U.S. sales company.

• *1 Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
• *2 VPAT: Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. A table containing information regarding how a particular product or service conforms with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.

Sharp has an after-sales service system that can handle all kinds of customer inquiries, whether it’s instructing them how to use products or repairing products that are not working properly.

Centered on Sharp Corporation’s Customer Assistance Center and after-sales service departments at Sharp sales companies, the entire Sharp Group worldwide collaborates to provide high-quality, fast, accurate, and friendly service that truly satisfies customers.

Repair of Sharp products in Japan is carried out by Sharp Marketing Japan Corporation, Customer Service Company. The entire company works together with a user-oriented mindset to satisfy customers and realize its slogan: “Looking customer smile is my pleasure” To this end, service engineers, who work out of more than 90 service bases*1 all over Japan and are familiar with local customers, provide repair service that truly satisfies customers.

Service inquiries are accepted every day of the year*2. The company puts special effort into prompt response to problems with home appliances that are indispensable to daily life, such as washing machines, refrigerators, and air conditioners.

• *1 As of June 2022.
• *2 Business days vary from region to region.

In Japan, all customers who are visited by service engineers are asked to answer a questionnaire covering the entire service process, from initial inquiry and appointment to product repair. More than 130,000 customer opinions are received annually via this questionnaire.
To improve convenience for customers and to speed up response, the questionnaire has also been available on the Sharp website since fiscal 2017. Starting in fiscal 2022, the survey will be completely web-based.

Sharp will continue to pass on customers’ valuable opinions to relevant company departments, closely analyze problems, and use the information gathered to improve service mechanisms and manufacturing.

The Customer Assistance Center must be able to provide customer support even in challenging times, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic or natural disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons.

Our business continuity plan (BCP) ensures the continued operation of our customer support services even in emergency situations. Our support offices are distributed across multiple locations and are connected through a system that makes them ready to complement one another.