Basic Guidelines of Yokohama Rubber’s Procurement
- Procure optimum raw materials, equipment, and construction
- In order to provide better products, we will continue to procure optimum raw materials, materials, and construction.
- Trading with fairness and impartiality
- We will conduct fair and equal trading based on the notion of free competition. Also, we source all our business partners from all over the world through global perspective.
- Reasonable selection of our partners
- As for the selection of our partners, we will determine them based on economical reasonability under consideration of comprehensive perspectives; their quality, price, stable supply, ability for technology development, and environmental friendliness.
- Partnership
- We will establish an equal and fair cooperative relationship through healthy trading with our business partners; we will enhance mutual understandings and credibility to achieve growth with one another.
- Compliance
- During our procurement activities, we will abide by all the related regulations and social standards in addition to not disclosing any confidential information we came to know during trading. Also, we will try not to conduct any misleading behavior by reflecting onto our socially accepted ideas.
- Harmony with the environment
- We will try to purchase raw materials with a lesser burden to the earth environment.
Our Procurement Policy is based on “co-development under fair and equal trading, by establishing a sense of trust, to realize co-existence and co-prosperity.” We think that true CSR should expand business relationships with partners who assent to and accommodate our policies in the areas where our production sites are located, and should realize co-prosperity not only with partner companies but also with each locality impacted by our business (with each partner). We aim to source all raw materials locally (with the exception of unique or rare materials), and strive to work on CSR activities together with our local partners. As a part of these approaches, we have held “Partners Workshops” and “CSR/Environment Contributor Recognition” activities. As a result, our local procurement rate reached 75% (up 2% from the previous year) in FY 2013. To further ensure stable local procurement, we have developed human resource by rotating duties among entry- to mid level employees, including overseas assignments. We have held Global meetings with procurement staff to ensure legal compliance and fair and equitable business practices. We have organized our global procurement system by establishing procurement sites all over the world and will promote local production for local consumption together with the education of local staff members.
As a part of our CSR procurement practices in consideration of human rights and the environment, we do not intentionally use any minerals (conflict minerals: tantalum, tin, gold, tungsten) from the disputed region of the Congo. We ask our partners to investigate and confirm that no conflict minerals have been used.
Osamu Fukutani
General Manager, Raw Materials Procurement Department
Global Procurement Division
Partners workshops and recognition
At all of our business offices, we held partner workshops on the topics of “human rights (harassment)” and “information control and security.” We aim to improve each other’s CSR level by learning about recent example cases and discussing the risks and solutions to those cases together with our partners. In FY 2013 we also started a CSR/environmental activities recognition program, and recognized 3 partners who made significant accomplishments in the first year.
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CSR/environmental activities recognition,
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Workshop at the Onomichi Plant
Global procurement staff meeting
We have held domestic material procurement meetings every other month with staff members from all of the domestic business plants, and global procurement staff meetings twice a year for overseas procurement staff, in order to study cases regarding to the code of conduct for procurement. 15 material procurement staff members from different countries including the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, China, and Russia, participated in the most recent global procurement meeting to learn about the Subcontract Act and a case of compliance violation.
In 2014, we will hold the second global meeting for overseas procurement staff on topics such as “partner self-assessment” and amendments to the global standards for procurement.
