Creating Value in Each Process
The NTN Group promotes initiatives in line with our materiality for responding to the SDGs, by leveraging our strengths in the respective processes of R&D, procurement, “Monozukuri” (manufacturing), and sales. In conducting our business activities based on our corporate philosophy, “We shall contribute to international society through creating new technologies and developing new products,” we create value in the value chain, leading to sustainable growth.
■Each Process
Creating Value in Each Process
R&D
To strengthen our core technologies and core products, and to create new products and businesses in new fields, we conduct surveys and analysis of industrial structures and market trends globally, and draw up product strategies corresponding to the results of such work.
Our strength lies in advanced development of products that anticipate customers’ needs and products that have not been available in the market before. In FY2023, we had 368 published unexamined patent applications, and 20 published newspaper articles on research and technological development.
To contribute to a carbon-free society, we pursue reduction in energy loss. We have also positioned the realization of a sustainable society using natural energy as one of our materiality, and we are working to spread wind turbines and contribute to a hydrogen society. In the field of wind power generation, we not only sell bearings (products), but also focus on the service solutions business such as condition monitoring (service), and consider a business cycle that also contributes to the aftermarket business (products) beyond that. Hydrogen-related field is one of the important next-generation energy fields, and we can demonstrate our core technological prowess toward realizing the use of hydrogen as a form of energy.
In addition to intellectual property rights that will help maintain and strengthen the competitiveness of our core products, we will strive to create intellectual property that can secure first mover’s advantage by utilizing the IP landscape in new fields.
Procurement
Our procurement strategy is based on sustainability, quality, reducing costs, and maximizing throughput, and we are globally expanding procurement in optimal locations by leveraging our value chain.
We have created an efficient procurement process by optimally combining the results of multi-factor analyses of each region’s industrial structure, logistics, exchange rate, and commodity prices.
In addition to building strong and stable relationships with key suppliers, we are also actively recruiting new suppliers both in Japan and overseas, and are striving to secure diverse resources.
Through these measures, we hope to globally deepen mutual understanding with our suppliers and to realize a trust-based value chain of coexistence and co-prosperity.
Monozukuri (Manufacturing)
NTN’s “Monozukuri” pursues improvements in safety (“S”), quality (“Q”), compliance (“C”), cost (“C”), deadline (“D”), and environment (“E”), stable production, improvements in productivity, shortening of lead times, and reduction in inventory, with the aim of enhancing our corporate value. Through production reforms and streamlining activities, we work to reduce inventory, shorten lead times, and improve throughput, thereby enhancing capital efficiency to generate profits. In consideration of the Earth’s environment, we have also made the shift to production facilities and processes that contribute to energy conservation and reducing CO2 emissions. In this way, we help to resolve social issues.
The strength of NTN Group’s “Monozukuri” (manufacturing) lies in quality. Our quality policy is to pursue quality to meet functions and specifications required by our customers. Keeping this in mind, we have developed a system that can swiftly respond to customer demands and a quality assurance system that can quickly respond on a global basis to changes in the external environment. We have also acquired ISO9001 certification for quality management systems for all of our manufacturing operations, including at our domestic and overseas consolidated subsidiaries.
We are committed to developing human resources with a strong understanding of quality so that our customers will continue to trust us and choose us for our high quality.
Sales
The NTN Group is putting effort into expanding the aftermarket business and strengthening the competitiveness of the OEM business. In the Bearing Business, we are working on boosting sales to the aftermarket through means such as increasing the inventory of our popular products, leveraging on the largest network of distributors in Japan as well as our global network. In addition to the sale of bearings, the OEM and aftermarket businesses also join hands to provide technical services to swiftly resolve problems faced by customers. By establishing and expanding the service business, such as bearing diagnosis and bearing refurbishment, we provide total support across the bearing life cycle. In the CVJ and Axle Bearing Business, we are deepening partnerships with customers and providing high value-added products that support the rapid shift toward EVs in the automotive market, taking advantage of our strength in problem-solving that is backed by the technological prowess we have developed through years of supporting global projects.
Alongside enhancing the functions of our products and increasing their added value through these efforts, we are also striving to further elevate the NTN brand and improve customer satisfaction by contributing to the realization of a sustainable society, as exemplified by carbon neutrality.
Efforts in accordance with materiality
■Related Materiality
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