Quality Management System and Product Safety​

Customer satisfaction is at the core of everything we do, beginning with the acquisition of a deep understanding of what the customer needs. Beyond simply listening to their feedback, we strive to perceive feelings and expectations that customers may not be able to articulate. We then propose solutions based on the customer’s perspective. Our aim is to offer RICOH Quality that delights our customers. This commitment is embedded in the corporate values that all Ricoh Group employees are expected to uphold so that they act with the full awareness that ensuring quality and customer satisfaction is their most important mission.
The Ricoh Group undertakes activities in pursuit of customer satisfaction to ensure RICOH Quality, which aims to “consistently delight and inspire our customers” by strengthening basic quality factors—such as safety and reliability—based on continuous communication with customers. In addition to efforts aimed at fulfilling social responsibilities, we actively invite customer comments so that we can better understand their needs. The customer perspectives thus gained are applied to our products and services to provide customers with truly useful value.

The principal Ricoh Group company involved in product safety activities is Ricoh Corporation, which has established Product Safety responsible division. Furthermore, it has set up related company head management departments responsible for the management and operation of each group company, ensuring the safety system of products across the entire Ricoh Group. Additionally, each company within the Ricoh Group sets evaluation steps necessary for product safety activities and manages quality assurance activities through further improvements.

Ricoh Group sales companies around the world improve quality based on our quality management system and the ISO 9001 standard. Most of our production sites and sales companies have earned ISO 9001 certification in our drive to enhance the quality of everything we do, from manufacturing through sales to customer service. The ISO9001 certified facilities are as follows:

Each company within Ricoh Group conducts product safety audits and product safety management system audits and they adhere to product regulations to ensure the safety of products for all customers. Product safety audits are conducted during the new product development process to assess compliance with product safety specifications set forth in planning specifications and product standards. Product safety management system audits are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the mechanisms and structures for promoting product safety activities. Through internal and external audits in product safety management system audits, the system's appropriateness is evaluated annually, and based on these evaluations, continuous improvements are implemented.

New technologies and new businesses for which product safety standards have not been established require a system to explore risks that have not been experienced before. Ricoh is strengthening the development of product safety risk assessment, which identifies product safety hazards in production processes and service provision, as an effective method for ensuring safety, especially when new technologies or mechanisms are adopted in existing products or in new business products. And we will do our utmost to ensure activities to guarantee product safety in new businesses, together with our own safety standard system that has been established in the past for MFPs and other products.

The Ricoh Group employs three market information databases related to product quality. The Maintenance Service Information System contains historical information on machine failures confirmed by customer engineers, along with the maintenance services we provided. The Quality Problem Management System links data obtained in Japan on product quality issues to data from our other markets around the world. If a quality-related problem occurs, the Design and Manufacturing Department discusses what action to take based on information in this database and provides prompt feedback to those involved. Finally, the Device Monitoring System allows us to obtain statistics on how customers use our equipment daily through @Remote™, our global remote device management service. The Ricoh Group uses these systems in an integrated way to obtain market information from multiple aspects. Based on this data, we can immediately identify and address problems, and take action to prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.