Looking Back 2024

It is a little early, but I would like to thank all of you, our employees for your hard work in 2024.
Once again, let me thank everyone for their efforts over the past year.
In 2024, the world situation is still unstable, with the Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan since the beginning of the year, as well as the situation in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict overseas not yet settled.
In addition, former President Trump was reelected in the U.S. presidential election in November, and the future trends of U.S. economic policies and other issues are drawing attention.
With the outlook for the external environment uncertain, it must have been difficult to respond to the sudden production adjustments, and so on.
I would like to thank you all again for your flexible response to the changes and your honesty in moving forward with the business activities.
Thanks to the steady efforts of all of the employees, our Group's full-year financial forecast of FY2024 is for a slight decrease in sales compared to the previous year but an increase in business profit and a record-high profit.

Site inspection and GMM

I visit all of our domestic bases and group companies every year, especially the actual manufacturing sites.
I also made overseas visits to Indonesia and Thailand in July, India and the U.S. in September, and China in December.
What I feel during my actual working site visits is that you are steadily accomplishing what I asked you to do during my previous visits and exceeding my expectations.
I was very pleased to see that a lot of kaizen activities were sincerely aimed at improving quality, not to mention safety measures.
I feel that continuing to make kaizen activity on a daily basis, keeping in mind that “there is no end to kaizen,” will help to reduce everyone's workload.
When the GMM (Global Management Meeting) was held in July 2024, a total of 204 people participated from Japan and abroad.
During the meeting, presentations were made mainly by local staff on priority implementation items and achievements in line with the three directions toward the 29V/25P’s “What We Want to Be .”
In addition, group company representatives gathered for workshops in specialized areas such as human resources, environment, and quality.

I feel that this kind of exchange will continue to be necessary in the future as a forum for sharing information on good practices among our Group companies.
In addition, as cultures and laws differ from country to country, I believe that GMM is a necessary initiative for the entire Group to continue to explore “what kind of manufacturing is needed by society.

It has been four and a half years since I took office as President!

The president's blog has been sent out more than 160 times to date.
I would like to continue to do so, and I would be happy if you, all employees, would read it and share your impressions and ideas with me.
It has also been three years since we started our WEB company newsletter “Mitsukumi2 (Two).”
It seems to be gaining in popularity, and I have heard that more than 4,100 people are making use of it.
I hope that you will continue to enhance communication group-wide as a whole.

Year-end and New Year's Holidays

I will, as usual, move around a bit, refresh myself and will turn my thoughts to further developing our Group toward achieving our medium-term management plan for 25th years and management vision for the 29th years.
I wish you all a happy New Year's holiday.
And let's all do our best next year with “Banji-nissei” in mind!