CSR

Hitachi AIC's CSR Involvement
Hitachi AIC, as a member of society, is reinforcing its CSR endeavors in order to play our part in realizing a sustainable society.

A corporation influences society and the environment through its corporate activities in various ways. Therefore, the corporate activities must be justifiable in light of social norms. CSR (corporate social responsibility) means not only offering high quality products and services to customers at fair prices, but also reducing the loads on the global environment and performing appropriate activities in compliance with laws, regulations and social codes.

To promote our activities with regard to social responsibility such as CSR, compliance and environmental protection, Hitachi AIC integrated the management of those activities into the Corporate Management Division. The Corporate Management Division also takes charge of export management, risk management, personal information protection, and the Reporting and Consulting Hotline.

Compliance

The term "compliance" is the noun form of the verb "comply" defined as "to act in accordance with, to obey, to follow (a rule, request, order, wish)." Generally, it is used to mean to "comply with legal regulations." At Hitachi AIC, we interpret this term with a broader meaning: "to act by the rules that a corporation should keep as a member of society." Compliance at Hitachi AIC means not only abiding by laws and regulations, but also acting positively in accordance with corporate ethics and social conventions.

The group responsible for compliance is endeavoring to promote complete compliance and social contribution activities from a company-wide perspective.

Environmental Protection

The group responsible for environmental safety aims to reduce the environmental loads caused by corporate activities and to secure the safety of local communities and employees. Environmental safety measures of the entire Hitachi AIC Group are promoted through various activities, such as the improvement of environmental conditions, the control of chemical substances, safety education from the fundamental perspective of safety, and measures to increase the intrinsic safety of the working environment.

Export Management

The group responsible for export management ensures legal compliance in exporting processes, and focuses on export management that promptly responds to changes in regulations, thorough implementation of inspections, improvement of education and monitoring programs, and alliances with the Hitachi Chemical Group companies.

Risk Management

The group responsible for risk management takes risk countermeasures to proactively prevent risks that would hinder business activities at the Hitachi AIC Group companies in Japan and overseas and to take appropriate actions in emergencies.

Personal Information Protection

To protect personal information, we have developed a system to comply with the Personal Information Protection Law that came into full force on April 1, 2005, and added "About Personal Information Protection" to our homepage.

Reporting and Consulting Hotline

To proactively prevent fraud by a corporation and to promote complete compliance, we adopted an in-house information reporting system called the "Reporting and Consulting Hotline." According to the "Rules on the In-house Reporting System," any employee who makes such a report is protected against any retaliation, and confidentiality is observed.

Hitachi AIC's Standards of Corporate Conduct

Hitachi AIC Inc. stipulated "Hitachi AIC's Standards of Corporate Conduct" in 1988. Since then, under the Fundamental Philosophy stipulated as "We fully recognize that a company is a member of the society to which it belongs. We implement our commitment to corporate activities through justice and transparency. We strive as a responsible corporate citizen toward bringing about a prosperous society," we have been ensuring full compliance with the rules of law and corporate ethics and conducting our corporate activities and various social action programs in accordance with the Action Guidelines.
(* The preamble, Fundamental Philosophy and Action Guideline of the Standards of Corporate Conduct can be found on our homepage. The implementation guidelines are not included.)

Promoting Green Purchasing

We are improving our green purchasing rate–the ratio of environmentally conscious products purchased to total office supplies–by using a Group-wide online purchasing system: the e-sourcing Mall. This system has a range of environmentally conscious products, and promotes purchasing by clearly labelling these products. For fiscal 2012, our green purchasing rate reached 92 per cent, two per cent up on the previous fiscal year.

Response to the Conflict Minerals Issue

In August 2012, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted and issued a final rule obliging companies with securities registered in the United States that use any conflict minerals in their products to report this to the SEC pursuant to Article 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed into law in July 2010. Conflict minerals include columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, gold, and wolframite, the four minerals determined to be financing conflicts that are produced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the "DRC") and adjoining countries (together the "DRC countries"). The goal of this law is to cut off revenues from armed groups that use violence and violate human rights in the conflict-ridden DRC countries.

Hitachi AIC Inc. strive to ensure that we do not, directly or indirectly, abet the human rights violations identified in the DRC countries. To continue our responsible procurement practices, we are working with Group companies, suppliers, and the industry association JEITA to strengthen supply chain transparency and to ensure that the minerals we procure do not finance or benefit armed groups committing human rights violations.