Improving profitability and strengthening cost competitiveness

「In addition to structural reforms undertaken to restore performance, including the reorganisation of North America and workforce optimisation in China and Thailand, we will advance rationalisation investments such as the reorganisation of domestic plants, restructuring of the procurement structure, and automation and labour-saving initiatives to further strengthen competitiveness and drive business growth.」

「Operating profit was ¥426 million, up 77.3% year on year, as a result of structural reforms through the consolidation of North American sites, cost-reduction initiatives, and efforts to strengthen our business base.」

「Improvement in the materials cost ratio through restructuring the procurement structure"; "Rebuilding our earning power"; "In the Indian market, we will continue investing to accommodate further production increases and strengthen our business base through local procurement and in-house production.」

「In North America, net sales were ¥16,102 million, up 16.9% year on year, due to increased production and the foreign exchange impact of the weaker yen. In addition to the effect of higher sales, the elimination of labour-cost losses and cost-reduction initiatives resulted in operating profit of ¥240 million, compared with an operating loss of ¥1,293 million in the same period of the previous year.」

「In our production operations, we will continue working to develop attractive products at low cost and with high quality by establishing a production system capable of responding to fluctuations in customer orders and producing without losses, and by advancing concurrent engineering, in which information is shared across departments from the planning stage of products under advance development to facilitate the early identification and correction of problems, thereby improving our earnings capacity.」

「In Japan, the reorganization of plants, including the consolidation and integration of aging factory buildings in the Chubu region, has been completed, and the company is working to reduce logistics costs between plants and processes.」

「To improve production efficiency, the tender offeror and the Company will jointly optimise the sheet-frame process chain and advance the manufacturing methods for sheet devices, thereby seeking to improve cost competitiveness.」

「To further improve profitability and achieve future growth, the Group has worked to promote production-line automation, transfer production to the Gifu Plant, its mother plant, and launch an integrated lamp production system at the Okayama Plant.」

「To strengthen our global competitiveness, we have worked to reduce labour requirements and improve quality through automation using robots and cameras.」

「We have focused on further improving earnings and developing our business for future growth. To improve earnings, under the theme of rebuilding our domestic business, we consolidated and integrated the assembly lines at the Nagoya Plant into the Gifu Plant and worked to establish optimised lines with reduced losses.」

「We will continue to advance reforms aimed at further improving our earnings capacity and strengthening cost competitiveness. As part of our earnings improvement initiatives, we will continue reducing fixed costs through the reorganisation of domestic plants and the integration of management functions at overseas sites. In production, we will strengthen cost competitiveness by thoroughly visualising and eliminating losses.」