Customers

The Kureha Group manufactures and sells various materials required by advanced industries, a variety of chemical products that support the foundation of industry, and household products, such as NEW Krewrap. In providing these products, we always put customer satisfaction first and engage in various activities to ensure that we adhere to our promised quality standards.

Product Safety and Quality Assurance

The Kureha Group continually reviews and improves its quality management system, while enhancing education about quality for its employees and collaborative activities with partner companies, aiming to realize and maintain a high level of quality (Kureha quality) that customers can value when they purchase our products. In addition, we have established mechanisms and an in-house examination system to ensure that safe and reliable products are delivered to our domestic and overseas customers.

Quality Policy

To provide goods and services that further satisfy our customers, we have established a quality policy, operate according to the international standard ISO 9001 quality management system, and engage in daily management and improvement efforts. We are also strengthening our quality assurance system and promoting and enhancing education about quality.

Kureha's Quality Policy

  1. We will strive to improve the quality of our products and services in order to further satisfy the customer.
  2. We will work to provide customers with safe products that they can feel good about using.
  3. We will focus on safety and disaster prevention while endeavoring to achieve stable product supply.



Major Themes for This Fiscal Year

  1. (1) Accurately understand customers' requests and improve quality by strengthening the operation of the quality management system.
  2. (2) Thoroughly implement appropriate quality control, including business partners, and reduce quality complaints to maintain the trust of customers.
  3. (3) Identify product safety risks and prevent accidents related to product safety.
  4. (4) Increase productivity, improve quality, and reduce costs through continuous improvement activities.

We will make this quality policy known to all employees.

April 1, 2021

President & Chief Executive Officer
KUREHA CORPORATION

Goals and Vision

  • Continue to provide high-quality (Kureha quality) products that customers value.

Fiscal Year 2022 Plan

  • Prevent quality issues by promoting improvement activities focusing on foreign material contamination and strengthening the effectiveness of audits.
  • Promote sharing of quality information across the entire Kureha Group and collaborate in improvement activities through effective monitoring.
  • Respond without delay to changes in laws and regulations related to quality, and to special standards for new businesses and expanded applications.

Fiscal 2022 Performance and Outcomes

  • Continued cross-department collaboration centered on measures against foreign material contamination. Constantly reviewed the effectiveness of activities through objective evaluations by external organizations.
  • Reviewed the management of business partners during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent the occurrence of defects due to insufficient monitoring.
  • Conducted audits of the environment, safety, and quality at each Group company to identify issues and areas for improvement.
  • Prepared for special standards for new businesses and confirmed product safety in accordance with quality management.

Quality Management System

Kureha acquired ISO 9001* certification in fiscal 1995, and have continued to operate and maintain a quality management system. We have developed internal rules in accordance with ISO 9001 for every stage from product design and development to sales, and we work hard operating and making improvements to the appropriate system so that customers can be provided with safe products and feel good about using them.

  • *Please contact us for more information about the scope of our ISO certification.
Quality Management System

Quality Improvement Initiatives

Initiatives to Strengthen Quality Control Including Group Companies

Our customers' and society's interest in quality control is on the rise, and the accuracy of quality inspections is becoming even more important. Our quality assurance staff has been visiting the quality assurance departments of our Group manufacturers to conduct audits and surveys since fiscal 2019 with the aim of improving the level of quality control throughout Group companies. These activities not only provide a good opportunity to be inspected from an external perspective, but also provide an opportunity to uncover issues common to all Group companies through the exchange of opinions and to identify the direction of activities for improvement.

Improvement Activities Focused on Countermeasures Against Foreign Material Contamination of Products

The prevention of foreign material contamination is a quality control issue of the highest importance that is fundamental to our customers' trust, as our products include food packaging materials such as NEW Krewrap. From the purchase of raw materials to when products are placed on store shelves, each and every employee must act with a heightened awareness of never allowing foreign material and a strong sense of responsibility and awareness for working in the food packaging materials industry. We strive to raise awareness of quality control through a variety of initiatives.

Basic Policy for Customer Satisfaction

As for household products, we created our Customer Support Policy in accordance with the Quality management—Customer Satisfaction—Guidelines for complaints handling in organizations (ISO 10002/JIS Q 10002). We rely on this policy not only for consistent customer service, but also continual improvement of customer service and customer satisfaction. We have also introduced an information management system called the Customer Feedback Flow System in order to promptly and appropriately respond to customer feedback and complaints about products and reflect them in new product development.
Here at Kureha, each one of us takes our customer feedback seriously, setting and steadily achieving goals which help us provide products that bring maximum customer satisfaction.

Behavioral Guidelines for Customer Satisfaction

  • We work to provide our customers with safe products they can use with peace of mind
  • We work to improve the quality of our products and services for maximal customer satisfaction, by sharing their valuable feedback.
  • We take the feedback from our customers seriously, and respond promptly, in good faith, with fair and impartial treatment.
  • We will continue to improve the quality of our products and services by achieving the quality goals we set.
  • We will strictly adhere to relevant legislation and company standards.
  • We will resolutely oppose unreasonable demands.

Goals and Vision

  • Promote activities in accordance with the Basic Policy and Activity Policy for Customer Satisfaction and strive for continuous improvement to enhance customer satisfaction.

Fiscal Year 2022 Plan

  • Provide a speedy as well as suitable response to each customer.
  • Provide prompt and courteous replies to customer inquiries.

Fiscal 2022 Performance and Outcomes

  • Made all initial responses to customer questions on the same day they were received (excluding special cases).
  • Completed all investigative reports for customer questions in two weeks (excluding special cases).
  • Clarified areas for further improvement through the process of investigating and dealing with the causes of complaints about our household products.

Customer Service Process

The Customer Service Office manages complaints, comments, requests, and inquiries from customers who use our household products such as NEW Krewrap and Kichinto-San. In fiscal 2014, we introduced an information management system called the Customer Feedback Flow System to share the real voices of our customers with relevant departments, such as the development, manufacturing, and quality assurance departments, and to promptly respond to complaint cases with requests for investigation. Using this system, relevant departments collaborate to investigate the causes of complaints, correct problems, and take other preventive measures to prevent recurrence of complaints and their causes.
Since this system has been in operation, we have received tens of thousands of messages from our customers, making it a valuable database. We organize and analyze this information and use it to improve existing products as well as develop new products to provide a more convenient and user-friendly experience for our customers.
We have also operated a traceability system since 2008 for tracking production lots and shipment receivers. When a quality problem occurs, we will take quick action and minimize damage. We will continue to utilize this system to win the trust of our customers.

Customer Service Process
Customer Engagement

Customer Engagement

In addition to our Customer Service Office, which diligently responds to customers' voices via telephone, letter, and e-mail, we are also making efforts to disclose information to customers who prefer to collect information on our products directly by themselves through a special website Kurelife. There we upload videos and illustrations on how to use our products, with a conscious effort to provide easy-to-understand explanations about safety and sanitation.

  • Customer Engagement

Outside Recognition of Product Improvements

Award-Winning History of NEW Krewrap and Kichinto-San

As for NEW Krewrap and Kichinto-San, we have been continuously improving existing models and developing new models to increase customer satisfaction. As a result, we have received much recognition from outside the company.

Safety Examinations

We follow established internal rules regarding safety examinations to ensure compliance and safety. Since we offer a wide range of products from household items to industrial products, we check for a variety of factors such as field of use, target customers, and methods of manufacturing, quality control, transportation, and use. We also put ourselves in the customer's shoes while examining SDS, labels, product catalogs, and other provided information in order to provide safe, reliable products both inside and outside of Kureha.
For example, the status of examination concerning the content of documents such as product packaging, catalogs, and advertising materials is as follows.

Status of safety document examination

FY 2018 FY 2019 FY 2020 FY 2021 FY 2022
Number of examinations 177 136 196 149 165

Safety Evaluations

We develop, manufacture, and sell new chemical products in a variety of fields. Chemical products enrich our lives, but they must be safe for their intended use and the environment in which they will be used. Evaluating the negative effects of our chemical products and preventing problems before they occur will lead to the maintenance and development of a sustainable society. As a company that upholds the corporate philosophy of treasuring people and the natural environment, ensuring the safety of chemical products is an important issue for us.
Kureha's Safety Research Center evaluates the products and materials we develop, manufacture, and sell, as well as the chemical substances we use, on human health and the environment to confirm their safety. We contribute to the development, manufacture, and sale of safe and reliable products by incorporating the latest scientific methods and findings into our safety evaluations, in addition to our specialized knowledge, skills, and understanding of safety regulations.