Safety and peace of mind

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.

Yamaha Motor aims to achieve “zero traffic fatalities by 2050.” To realize this goal, we believe it is essential not only to enhance “Technology” that supports riding but also to improve “Skills,” including knowledge and experience related to safe riding, “Connectivity” between people and mobility. We specifically work on “Risk Prediction riding assist”, “Damage inhibition and defensive riding assist”, “Emergency avoidance riding assist” and “Damage mitigation”.

To implement effective measures for reducing traffic fatalities, we place importance on reserching and analyzing accident data to examine and formulate appropriate countermeasures.

Through these activities, we aim to realize “safety and peace of mind mobility,” “enjoyable mobility,” and ultimately “world free of accidents.”

For products other than motorcycles as well, we are implementing safety initiatives based on the “Jin-Ki Kanno × Jin-Ki Anzen” approach.

Causes of Motorcycle Accidents and Countermeasure Trends

Yamaha Motor analyzes accidents by country and region and classifies them into seven forms for analysis and countermeasure creation. In the Technology area, we are working on developing peripheral warning systems*1 and cooperative intelligent transportation systems*2 toward real-world rollouts. In the Skills area, we are expanding the scale of the Yamaha Riding Academy (YRA) and promote awareness of knowledge for safe and proper use.

*1 Systems that monitor the vehicle's surroundings via camera, radar, etc., and alert the user of a potential collision
*2 Systems that use wireless communication technologies to connect people, roads, and vehicles to aid in safe driving and the like

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

We are also promoting global safety awareness not only through initiatives with our customers but also by working together with government agencies and industry organizations in each country to address the social issue of reducing accident.

Major Affiliated Organizations

• International Motorcycle Manufacturers Association (IMMA)
• Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association（JAMA)
• Japan Marine Industry Association (JMIA)
• 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

Basic 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 and confidence, aiming to be recognized as “Yamaha quality” through inspiring customer experiences.

By high-quality products and services, we mean that our offerings fully reflect the quality demanded by customers, ensure safety, match their application, have a service life of an appropriate length, and are 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.

To ensure the quality of our products and services and to comply with relevant regulations, we are also committed to initiatives that emphasize transparency.

Quality Management System

We have established and implemented a globally operating quality management system based on ISO 9001 standards and our unique Groupwide quality policy declared by the President. These 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 Management 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 have also obtained ISO 9001 certification for our major products and ensure the appropriateness of activities through regular audits.

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.

Quality Improvement Training

As part of human resource development, we provide stratified quality improvement training to ensure they have ingrained, quality-related knowledge and skills. We also promote various technical training programs that help enhance skills in areas such as methods for designing safe products, preventive and recurrence prevention techniques, and risk assessment.

Fostering Quality Awareness

To deliver Kando* to our customers, each and every employee acts with a strong sense of ownership—recognizing that “it is not someone else, but I myself who bring the Yamaha brand to life.” This 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.

Learning through Experience Hall

We have established a showroom displaying past market quality issue cases with the aim of passing on past experiences to the future. By learning from these lessons and applying the insights to their own work, employees are encouraged to raise their awareness of quality improvement.

Workshop for young Employees

We continue to offer experiential learning programs primarily for selected young employees to raise awareness and encourage reflection on the question, “What makes an open and transparent company?

VOC Activities (VOC = Voice of Customer)

We conduct “VOC activities” as an awareness-building initiative for employees, utilizing feedback received from customers. By encouraging employees to empathize with the emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure—expressed by individual customers, we promote thinking and acting from a customer-oriented perspective.

Awareness Survey

We conduct awareness surveys to understand employee motivation and attitudes toward quality. The purpose is to visualize areas for improvement by delving not only into technical aspects and systems related to quality issues but also into their connection with inter self of human.

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.”