YKK AP is Once Again Certified as a Gold Product Safety Company

＜Evaluated Initiatives＞

●“User Verification" and "Field Verification" at the Value Verification Center

YKK AP continues to promote the verification and creation of standards for various risks assumed during the process of commercialization and use through "field verification" that is based on the assumption of increasingly serious natural disasters, as well as "user verification," which focuses on the actual living conditions of consumers.

Notably, YKK AP was recognized in this review for promoting consumer verification through innovations such as online home visits, despite the difficulty in visiting customers’ homes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We were also recognized for our willingness to promote product safety in conjunction with other companies in and outside the industry by introducing them to company facilities, including the Value Verification Center, and inviting them to visit.

●Passing down expertise

YKK AP is working to ensure that veteran employees pass down their experience, knowledge, and technical skills, so that design expertise will be inherited by younger employees.

The "Awareness Skills Development" training program for young employees, which aims to help them grasp the essence of things and acquire the knowledge to control risks, was highly

rated. Within this program, the methods used to conceptualize higher-level factors in past incidents, then horizontally develop a broad range of lower-level factors, won particular acclaim.

YKK AP received high marks for stationing its field engineers—who provide technical support to vendors that handle YKK AP products and respond to problems by obtaining on-site information and continuously providing feedback to the development team—at divisions all over the country. We were also recognized for introducing and operating an in-house qualification system aimed at improving the response capabilities and technical prowess of field engineers.

●Providing information for various audiences

YKK AP creates and provides manuals such as booklets and videos for various audiences, including assembly and installation businesses. For customers, the company also provides guidebooks that organize information from the perspective of actual users, as well as easy-to-understand video instruction manuals.

In this review, YKK AP was once again commended for improving the content of instruction manuals communicated from a consumer viewpoint

after evaluating what was high-risk and low-risk depending on the frequency of handling and working with architectural products. In addition, it was recognized for its efforts to prevent accidents that occur when children use windows and doors by using drills and online games, featuring the popular children's character Unko-sensei, to warn children about the danger of such accidents.