The globalization of production and procurement and today’s advanced product performance mean there is a greater risk of production issues. This makes it difficult to deal with quality issues using only conventional quality assurance and quality management methods. Consequently, Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc. thoroughly analyzes past quality problems and investigates the root causes. In this way it is focusing on tackling problems in the early stages, not only through reoccurrence prevention, but also through the elimination of potential problems never encountered before.
In the unlikely event of a quality incident, the first priority is to respond quickly and minimize any inconvenience to customers. To deal with any problem that may arise, Konica Minolta has a system for the immediate assembly of a response team of experts from the divisions concerned. Furthermore, the company has built a system that can gather and compile information relating to the quality problem concerned, and distribute it to top management and relevant divisions within the same day. This enables rapid decision making and determination.
It was determined that the Konica Minolta A4 color printers magicolor 4750DN and magicolor 3730DN have the potential to overheat and catch fire under very rare circumstances. Accordingly, in April 2011, the company posted a notice on its websites in regions where the model numbers subject to this risk were sold, offering free inspection and repair of these products.

Using improvement methods based on fact and data analysis, Konica Minolta is promoting unique Process Improvement efforts, targeting workplace reform and human resource improvement. Although it started off as a production site initiative in Japan, in recent years it has since spread to sites in China, as well as business support divisions. Through this effort, quality improvement is being advanced from the frontlines.
Meanwhile, as part of initiatives to address management issues, the Group has been carrying out Production Capability Strengthening Activities for production innovation under the leadership of executives and organizational managers responsible for production at each Group company.
Since fiscal 2009, these two activities were linked together, and the Group began Evaluation of Production Capability with the aim of improving quality and reducing costs at production sites. Under this new initiative, teams comprised of managers responsible for production capability as well as personnel involved in process improvement perform site evaluations twice a year at all the major production sites in Japan and Asia. The plan is to raise the bar across the entire Group by promoting mutual cross evaluations between different Konica Minolta companies and sharing successful practices.
The average evaluation scores are steadily rising, thanks to even more efficient issue resolution. This is the result of combining improvement activities at individual plants, along with initiatives for strengthening productivity based on the identification of issues from a broad perspective. In the future, Konica Minolta will raise the production efficiency group-wide, by promoting direct guidance to Group companies with low evaluation scores.