Actions taken for ESG

The Janome Group recognizes the gravity of E (Environment), S (Social) and G (Governance) in managing its group companies, reviews and revises its organizational structure and actively engages in fulfilling its corporate social mission and in solving social issues. There is a limit to what a private enterprise can do on its own to not only remain a going concern but also to produce profit and to continue its growth. Recognition by society of its value for existence, winning trust for its products and services and contributing to the development of society—repetition of this cycle resulting in the co-creation of new values with society, we firmly believe, is the one and only path to overcome the limit and stay on the course of sustainable growth for the Janome Group. This is the belief that runs as undercurrent of various actions of the Janome Group companies including planning and executing the Medium Term Management Plan.

Actions taken for Global Environment

Environmental issues of the earth are global matters of concern. We strongly believe it is only natural for a private enterprise consuming sizable energy and resources for its business executions to engage in such activities as environmental load reduction and preservation of the environment. The Janome Group would like to take this one step further to include environmental factors themselves directly in its business activities, so that environmental activities will be identified as business opportunities, achievement of which directly enhances our corporate value. Sewing machines and industrial equipment, major products we manufacture and distribute, have inherent ‘environmentally friendly and conscious’ characteristics. We will improve those characteristics further in our future product development and modifications. Increased efforts will be made to promote environment related activities along the line of Janome’s ‘Environment Policy’ and its bylaw ‘Green Procurement Guidelines’ on top of the factors regarding environmental load reduction already built-in from the supply chain and production phase to every other phase of our business activities.

Actions taken for Social --Value Co-creation with Society and Human Asset Development

Janome believes that it can continue to fulfill its role as a public institution of the society by establishing sound relationship with and by earning confidence and trust in us from many people at various scenes and phases of society. We always endeavor to present valuable products and services to our customers, that impress, satisfy and give them comfort for ease of use, and we are eager to listen to their comments and requests which would give us good insight to be reflected in the quality enhancement of our products. To our shareholders and investors providing us with financial support for our business activities, we endeavor to expand in return our corporate value by reinvesting in strengthening our corporate structure and/or by increasing dividend payout to shareholders as well as to disclose adequate management information. We then put our management decisions dictating the balance of reinvestment and payout to the vote of confidence to our shareholders and investors. We appreciate our ‘business partners’ sharing the same motive to realize our corporate mission, for working closely together through fair and transparent trade(*) to invigorate the functions of every step of the overall supply chain including procurement. With ‘local community’ we will be involved in various activities to support the development of the community. Employees are the engines to facilitate all of those activities as each and every one of them sincerely and creatively demonstrates his or her ability in fulfilling the very business executions described above, thereby supporting the expansion of our corporate value. Janome specifically chooses the term ‘Human Asset’ to describe human resources, because we regard an employee as human capital and asset, not as resource to be consumed and exhausted. We believe continuous cycle of education, training and on-the-job experience to develop and nurture human assets should directly and indirectly drive Janome to improve product quality and functions and bring out brand new products, and to ultimately present a new business model to the world, establishing its superiority as a private enterprise. Additionally, we are actively engaged in human rights education, work-style reform, women’s participation and advancement in the workplace, all of which should help our employees to have better understanding of diversity as well as respect for individual personality and humanity, without which we cannot build a foundation to generate a great team work and significant achievement.

* Fair and Transparent Trade

Compliance with Act against Delay in Payment of Subcontract Proceeds, Etc. to Subcontractors

‘The Janome Group Code of Conduct’ clearly states in the bylaw that ‘we establish and maintain fair procurement policies’ and that ‘we do not abuse superior bargaining position to force unfair pricing on any purchasing party’. We have documented these policies in our internal guidelines for all the department activities to comply with, and are providing appropriate employee education to conduct compliant behaviors such as sending key staff to seminars organized by Fair Trade Commission and The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency.

Bribery Prevention

Janome has documented ‘The Basic Policies of Bribery Prevention’ to ban the employees from receiving and offering entertainment, gifts or monetary compensations to and from all the business partners, without limiting its target to domestic and foreign public servants, for the purpose of obtaining or maintaining unfair profit or preferential treatment. In practice, the Entertainment Guidelines clearly lay out the standards of conduct and Internal Audit Department performs audits as it sees fit to examine if the business activities are conducted according to these guidelines.

Actions taken for conflict minerals

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Article 1502 ‘Conflict Minerals’ obligates those US listed companies to report to US Securities and Exchange Commission who are applying such minerals sourced from Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighboring countries as gold, tin, tantalum, tungsten etc., to their production process or their output products. This article aims to cut off funding source to militant forces in these conflict areas. We are actively engaged in supporting this act to fulfill our corporate social responsibility as we supply certain products to some of those affected US listed companies.

Actions taken for Corporate Governance

Janome recognizes pursuing corporate governance and risk management and reinforcing compliance as crucial management task and will pursue this task for us to continuously execute our businesses to enhance and expand our corporate value further. We believe corporate governance is the function to make management decisions that are both transparent and fair, prompt and decisive for Janome to cement sound relationships with each stakeholder including investors to co-create corporate value. On top of the general recognition of corporate governance as a structure for a private enterprise to avoid risks, to prevent scandals and to enhance transparency, Janome believes that pursuing corporate governance gives management more incentives to take sound risk, to support our effort for sustainable growth and to realize medium to long term expansion of our corporate value. Risk management is performed by the ‘Risk Management Committee’ which identifies the risks we may face in pursuing sustainable expansion of corporate value, grasps the potential impact of these risks and prepares measures in advance to prevent, minimize or diversify the losses. Each risk is scrutinized of its probability of occurrence and its potential impact to determine its gravity, according to which preventive measures are elaborated and implemented. Compliance is required at Janome for observing corporate ethics and social norms not to mention laws and internal regulations. A compliance system is governed by Compliance Committee, comprised of directors. Internal Reporting Hotline is set up to ensure organic function of the system for early detection and correction of unfair practices

Contribution to achieve SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals)

Janome believes contributing to realize sustainable society is our corporate social responsibility and will pursue achieving each goal of SDGs by executing business operations from each perspective of ESG. Janome celebrated the 100th Anniversary of its founding in October 2021. We would not be here without a century of support by society, environment and people. It has been a century of incessant conflicts and war, famine and poverty in some parts of the earth and human rights have been neglected. Along the process of industrial revolution and ensuing economic development, there occurred environmental destruction, pollution and waste of natural resources and many forms of social inequality abounded. Modern society faces a wide variety of challenges, which call for the global participation and cooperation of all countries on the planet earth, if we mean to solve them. Janome, as a corporate citizen, will tackle those challenges to ensure sustainable growth of our own as well as the realization of the sustainable society.

SDGs

*Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are the international commitment to realize sustainable and better world by year 2030, as documented in ‘The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development‘, adopted at United Nations summit in September 2015.

ISO14001 Certificate Renewal

Every production unit of Janome Group maintains a certificate of ISO14001 or ECO Action 21 and independently operates and monitors each environment management system. Environment Officers, appointed by the management, controls and reports the ISO activities for discussions at Quality/Environment Committee meeting, chaired by President and Representative Director. Environment Management System dictates daily activities, which are subject to annual external review by the authorizing body as well as by internal audit. These activities are reported to the management at the annual management review and are put through PDCA cycle for improvement.

ISO certificate update of Janome and group companies

*Janome Diecasting Kansai factory maintains ISO14001
Company Name ISO14001 ISO9001
JANOME Corporation
Janome Diecasting Co., Ltd. ― *Eco Action 21
Janome Taiwan Co., Ltd.
Janome Thailand Co., Ltd.
Janome Diecasiting (Thailand) Co., Ltd.