Quality guarantee system and quality guarantee activities

Sharp specifies the quality levels it guarantees to customers, thus ensuring that all employees aim for the same targets in their ongoing pursuit of quality improvement.
All Sharp bases in Japan and abroad have obtained the ISO9000 certification of international quality, as well as adopt Sharp Group’s proprietary quality guarantee standards.

With respect to product safety‚ the Sharp Group designates and observes its own strict standards for technical safety, in addition to carefully following the safety standards and regulations of all the countries it is active in.

1) Quality guarantee in design

To ensure quality‚ reliability and safety that go well beyond customer expectations‚ Sharp implements the following procedures at the design stage.

1. Quality engineering (parameter design): Sharp adopts quality engineering (parameter design) to design products that take all possible customer usage and degradation conditions into account.
2. CMM-based original software development model: As more and more products become digital‚ the demand for more complex and larger-scale software is growing. In creating this software‚ Sharp has established a development process standard and has formulated an original CMM^(*)-based model to evaluate and improve the processes of software development.
3. Double-safety design: To ensure the utmost product safety‚ Sharp is evolving products in numerous ways. For example‚ products are designed to use less voltage and amperage‚ eliminate contact points and employ non-combustibles. And should a malfunction actually occur‚ double-safety designs are in place to prevent the problem from causing an accident.

* CMM: Capability Maturity Model. A method to improve the quality and processes in software development.

2) Quality guarantee in production

To manufacture products that meet the high quality‚ reliability and safety standards targeted in the design stage‚ Sharp has established the following procedures during the production stage.

1. Guarantee of procured parts and materials: To ensure that suppliers provide only parts and materials that meet strict standards for quality‚ Sharp clearly outlines its standards and signs quality guarantee agreements with suppliers. Sharp also conducts inspections to confirm the quality of parts and materials being received.
2. Product shipping inspection control: In addition to the final inspections carried out by production divisions‚ Sharp’s quality divisions conduct random inspections to confirm that products being shipped meet Sharp’s strict quality standards. Also‚ to search for defects in the initial usage stage, as well as epidemic defects or production-line problems‚ Sharp conducts complete burn-in testing in the manufacturing process and first-lot reliability burn-in tests.
3. Quality guarantee of stored items: By selecting storage locations with optimal environmental conditions and following the "first-in‚ first-out" principle‚ Sharp aims to prevent quality deterioration‚ damage and wrongful usage of stored items such as parts‚ materials and half-finished goods.

3) Quality guarantee in evaluation and testing

To determine whether products have achieved the quality‚ reliability and safety targeted in the design stage‚ Sharp carries out the following tests and evaluations.

1. Long-term reliability confirmation: Through accelerated product-life tests using the HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) device and multi-environment testing device‚ Sharp is able to confirm the reliability of products over a long duration of use.
2. Safety confirmation: Combustion tests and safety evaluation tests are used to confirm that products are absolutely safe. Sharp is also working to pioneer new testing methods.
3. Investigation into the cause of malfunctions: If any malfunction occurs during testing or evaluation‚ Sharp analyzes the problem at a molecular/elemental level to identify the root cause. The results are then stored in a database so they can be incorporated into product improvements and future product development.

Starting in fiscal 2004, Sharp introduced X-ray CT (computed tomography) scanning, a method commonly used in medical checkups, as a means of examining products internally to detect potential problems. Parts and materials that are currently being considered for use undergo both accelerated life tests (HALT) and internal X-ray CT scans. And, because products can be examined internally without being subjected to disassembly, these parts and materials can go through repeated rounds of HALT, enabling reliability evaluations and long-term accelerated life testing. Sharp also uses other devices for scientific analysis to refine testing further with the aim of achieving zero malfunctions.

4) Quality guarantee in the market

To establish whether products actually meet customer expectations and to fuel future product improvements‚ Sharp carries out the following activities.

1. Reflecting repair information in products: Repair details and information gathered from customer inquiries are swiftly fed back to the product’s related business sites; this enables the divisions in charge to investigate and incorporate data into future product and system improvements.
2. Solutions at the site: For certain products‚ if a quality problem should arise immediately after its entry into the market‚ a Sharp employee is quickly dispatched to the product location to identify the usage conditions and operating environment with the aim of solving the problem on the spot.