Safety and peace of mind
We introduce our social initiatives that support the safety and peace of mind of customers, such as safety, quality, and after-sales service.
As a company with mobility products as our core products, the safety and peace of mind of our customers is a fundamental premise for conducting business. To this end, we listen sincerely to the voices of our customers in every step, in our activities from monozukuri (engineering, manufacturing and marketing) processes including product planning, development, design, and production to sales and after-sales services, so that our customers will keep coming back.
Initiatives on Safety
Safety Vision: “Jin-Ki Kanno & Jin-Ki Anzen”
Jin-Ki Kanno & Jin-Ki Anzen expresses Yamaha Motor's unique mindset of aiming to create an accident-free society together with our customers by providing the joy and Kando that comes from users enjoying themselves while improving their abilities based on safety centered on “skills,” “technology” and “connectivity.” Jin-Ki Kanno means “The Seductive Exhilaration of Being One With the Machine” while Jin-Ki Anzen is the Company's belief that having people and machines work together in complementary ways can make more sophisticated safety skills and technologies possible.
In the Medium-Term Management Plan (2022-2024) announced in February 2022, Yamaha Motor made sustainability a new pillar of its corporate activities and is prioritizing several non-financial indicators to enhance social value. In aiming to create value in a new mobility society, "safer riding and users' peace of mind" is one of the banners under which Yamaha Motor is looking to connect with people and thrive as a company.
Customer Safety Initiatives
To help our customers use our products safely and correctly, user manuals include information on methods of usage, recommended clothing and regular maintenance, and dealers also communicate the correct way to use the products. Through the Yamaha Riding Academy (YRA), we also continue with activities aimed at increasing customers’ awareness of safe driving and improving their skills.
Furthermore, we believe that in addition to techniques that help with safety, it is important to “connect” customers to the products. We specifically work on “hazard anticipation driving assistance,” “damage prevention and defensive driving assistance,” “emergency evasive driving assistance” and “damage reduction.”
We pursue global activities to promote safety with the aim of reducing accidents, sharing accident information with the government agencies and international organs such as the United Nations. The following is a list of some of our safety promotion activities.
Government-Industry Cooperation
To ensure the safety of our products, we adhere to safety standards as a matter of course and also work together with the governments and industry groups of each country in pursuit of the ideal in terms of safer products.
Major Affiliated Organizations
- International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association (IMMA)
- Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association（JAMA)
- Japan Marine Industry Association
- Japan Snowmobile Safety Association
- Specialty Vehicle Institute of America® (SVIA)
- Personal Watercraft Industry Association (PWIA)
- Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Association (ROHVA)
- Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI)
- Connected Motorcycle Consortium (CMC)
- Road Accident Sampling System – India（RASSI）
Initiatives on Quality
Approach to Quality
At Yamaha Motor, we always take a customer-oriented approach in our efforts to achieve safety and reliability through high-quality products and services, and to constantly provide peace of mind, confidence, and a sense of excitement to customers.
By high-quality products and services, we mean that our offerings fully reflect the quality demanded by customers, ensure safety, match their application, and have a service life of an appropriate length, in addition to being designed and manufactured to ensure they serve their functions continuously during use, and provide a high level of confidence, peace of mind, and excitement to the customers who use them.
Our major factories in Japan and abroad are ISO 9001 certified and audited to ensure that all activities are carried out appropriately.
Quality Management System
We have established and implemented a quality management system based on ISO 9001 standards and our unique Groupwide quality policy declared by the President.
These global efforts are based on the three-year Medium-term Management Plan developed at the headquarters, with each Group company planning their activities and setting medium-term targets in line with this plan. The medium-term plan created by each business and its progress are reviewed at our annual business management review where issues are discussed to arrive at a solution, thereby running the PDCA cycle of our quality management system.
We also have a committee that monitors whether quality information is being processed appropriately in the market based on the product problem information and warranty repair information in each market. This committee ensures timely investigations and reporting to management.
Collecting and Responding to Market Information
We have a system in place to collect information about quality issues that arise in the market through dealers around the world and ensure the factory where the product was manufactured has access to the information. The information is delivered to the design and manufacturing divisions as well as the development and production departments of suppliers, so that coordinated efforts can be made to determine the cause and implement countermeasures, while handling the issue appropriately for the customers and developing measures to prevent recurrence.
We also have in place an escalation flow that ensures information quickly reaches management in the event of a product incident or a nonconformity product that may infringe on laws and regulations, as well as a system that enables deliberations, so that timely judgment and decisions can be made. When it is determined that market measures are necessary, we quickly notify the relevant authorities of the country where the incident or nonconformity product occurred according to its laws and regulations, then our dealers notify the users of the product that free repairs will be provided by direct mail, phone, announcement on the website, or other means.
Quality Improvement Training
We provide stratified quality improvement training each year to employees in manufacturing and quality management divisions to ensure they have ingrained, quality-related knowledge and skills. Employees in development divisions take various skill enhancement courses on methods for designing safe products, risk assessment, and other topics.
We also pursue various other efforts aimed at quality enhancement based on the knowledge and skills developed through training. One example is the "I am Yamaha" activities that we have been conducting globally since 2015. These activities encourage a strong sense of ownership in every employee, so that each individual believes, "It is I, and no one else, who is personally responsible for making the Yamaha brand shine." This attitude, along with a customer-oriented approach, allows employees to refine their powers of perception (ability to make discoveries) and to enhance the quality of not only products but also their work.
As part of these activities, we set up an exhibition space dubbed "Learning from Mistakes," where examples of past market quality problem are showcased with the aim of transferring past experience to future generations. This activity enables sharing of information between business divisions and with overseas manufacturing sites.
After-sales
Improving Service Quality through Dealership Staff Training
The Yamaha Motor Group considers providing services and parts through after-sales services to be a vital mission that allows our customers to thoroughly enjoy their lives and lifestyles through our products. We also want customers to become Yamaha fans through their experiences at points of contact.
With regard to service, we have adopted the slogan “One to One Service” for the active creation of positive relationships with each individual customer. In accordance with the slogan, we operate the Yamaha Technical Academy (YTA) program around the world to train service technicians as per our proprietary unified global standard.
Trainers in each country who have been trained in Japan hold classes that run for a certain period of time for the service staff in their country, so that they acquire technical skills that are up to Yamaha's unified global standard.
This program has three levels of accreditation–Bronze, Silver, and Gold–and we have standards for the employment of certified mechanics by dealers. By having Yamaha-accredited staff perform maintenance, we can continuously ensure the safety and reliability of Yamaha products for our customers.
We also operate a similar global training program called Yamaha Parts & Accessories Academy for staff who handle parts.
Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix
The Yamaha World Technician Grand Prix is one of our activities to deliver even greater customer satisfaction by enhancing the technical abilities used in daily work by service staff who have been trained at the YTA. The top finishers at regional preliminary rounds gather at our headquarters to compete in a contest to determine the world champions from the perspectives of “high level of technical skills,” “easy-to-understand explanations,” and “Kando response.” Service staff from around the world participate in this competition, and their motivation to be a top finisher is reflected in their daily service activities.
Customer-oriented Activities
We want customers to use our products with peace of mind for a long time. This makes a quick and stable supply of parts indispensable. To prevent shortages, we maintain a minimum of a 10-year supply of parts, and have built a system where customers can order parts online and have them delivered quickly.
For customer convenience, we also keep a parts list published on the website.
Use of Customer Information
The Yamaha Motor Group views opinions and requests from customers as expressions of their expectations for our products and services, so we carefully respond to each opinion and request we receive, in the belief that raising the level of customer satisfaction will lead to trust. Based on this spirit, we undertake various activities to know how customers evaluate and use our products, and to learn how to improve our products and what kinds of products to make in the future. For example, we send an Internet survey to customers who have purchased a new product, and in some cases, we may ask the customer in person for a more detailed evaluation.
Our Customer Communication Centers (CCCs) * set up at sales offices in Japan and abroad handle customer inquiries related to our products and services.
Comments received from customers are collected by YMC Service from service divisions, and reported to related departments and development and manufacturing sites, with instructions for improvement given as needed, as part of our efforts to develop and improve our products and enhance our services.
* The name differs from country to country, such as “Customer Relations.”
