NEC Won the Japan Quality Award

NEC has received the First Japan Quality Award, a distinction awarded by the Japan Quality Award Committee (Chairman of the Committee: Shouichi Sanami) to "Companies with Outstanding Quality Control."

NEC makes its commitment to quality control clear when it states in Section 1 of its Management Policies: "Giving Top Priority to Customer Satisfaction through relentless efforts to provide better products and better services." On this principle, NEC has built its business operation on the solid foundation of a management styles focusing on the customer. With this return to the basics of corporate management in all areas to the NEC's activities the customer is valued as the focal element. The recent award of the Japan Quality Award goes hand in glove with the management principles embraced by NEC. In his New Year's address of last year, the Chairman of NEC called upon all associates to do their utmost to put into practice and help to diffuse the aimed-at customer-value style of management through a bid for the award of this medal. The first move in this direction was the decision to make an entry for the medal with its Semiconductor Group.

NEC's Semiconductor Group goes about its business with an awareness that Customer Satisfaction Comes First and that every effort has to be made to achieve Excellent Results. The realization that the creation of Customer Value itself is the first step toward customer satisfaction was the inspiring factor that led the Group to offer optimum solutions to the customer through a positive commitment to the "System on a Chip" concept. In response to the globalization of the market, efforts have been made to upgrade "Customer Value" by establishing -- ahead of other companies -- an integrated system harnessing the development, production and sales activities in an overall manner in all parts of the world - Japan, the U.S., Europe and Asia. Thanks to this commitment, the Corporation's Semiconductor Department moved up in status to a second ranking worldwide. With its main product ASIC (Special Application IC) it has a top ranking, with its memory devices a second ranking, and with its micro computer products a third ranking on a worldwide basis.

The approach adopted in the pursuit of excellent business results is the day to day bench-marking that applies to all areas and organizations of the Semiconductor Group. What this bench-marking entails is to find answers to questions such as these: "Which is the company that achieves top results?" - "Which is the process that gives us splendid results?" - "Can't we apply it to our own corporate improvement plans?"

The specific activities the Semiconductor Group engages in have included, since 1986, the "Halve-our-total-coasts movement," and the "Challenge the Best movement" whose intention has been developed to improve the quality of management. Since 1994, the "Time to Market movement" has been deployed on the theme of "early and fast" -- one of the constituents of customer satisfaction" -- with the full thrust of a commitment to the speeding up of management.

Through these activities the Semiconductor Group was successful in having four departments win the Deming Prize for their TQC activities, and 16 departments, including overseas plants, win the TPM prize for their total productive maintenance activities. In addition, there are 23 departments who have won accreditation under the ISO9000 system, the international standard on product quality.

The recent wining the Japan Quality Award not merely bears testimony to the quality of NEC products and services. It is an endorsement of the fact that NEC's stance of a Customer-Value Style of Management and the Corporation's System is at a level recognized throughout the world. The award of this prestigious medal leaves NEC with a new sense of direction and commitment toward enhancing our global competitiveness -- that is, the building of a competitive strength zeroing in on the global market.

NEC will remain steadfast to its spirit of challenge that will give us the strength to enter the race for many more medals to be won by many of our other departments and the determination to continue our effort toward corporate self-reform.