The investigation, which was ordered by the company's new management, ran from mid May to mid August. During the three-month span, a total of 4,000 employees pored over more than 630,000 documents — including product information reports, technical letters, and work directives — dating back to 1979 looking for information on product defects.

The company first investigated back to December 1993 and announced on June 2 that it had found 92 cases of repair directives, or so-called shiji-kaishu. On July 29, MMC finalized submissions to the ministry for all 35 cases that required post-market measures (33 recalls, 2 improvement measures).

In conjunction with this, MMC expanded the scope of its investigations to look into the situation surrounding these repair directives. Through this investigation the company found that 224 repair directives dating back to 1979 had been issued. Post-market measures for 31 of these cases have already been implemented and no accidents or fires have been reported for any of the 224 repair directives. One recall will be submitted out of the remaining 193 repair directives. MMC has determined that the other 192 cases do not require post-market measures, but the company will continue consultations with the ministry and take the appropriate steps deemed necessary.

MMC reiterated that it had not issued a single repair directive since its recall problems in July 2000 and has implemented the appropriate post-market measures. After looking over 134,000 product information reports stored within the company and at its dealers, MMC also verified that the process for dealing with defect information had been carried out appropriately since July 2000.

Steps to prevent reoccurrences

Today's report marks the end of MMC's investigation into past recall problems, but to restore trust in the company as soon as possible, MMC has outlined a number of steps to ensure a similar situation never occurs again.

Firstly, the company will put in place an even stricter process to deal with defect information and increase objectivity by seeking the opinion of external parties.

MMC will also speed up its repairs. The company is aiming to repair 90 percent — on a registered basis — of the vehicles affected by the 35 cases requiring post-market measures by the end of December. To help with this, 35 people will be sent from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and eight from Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi Ltd.

To look into how these recall issues were allowed to occur and deduce the series of events surrounding the problem, MMC has employed a group of thirteen external lawyers which will carry out a probing investigation and report its findings to the Business Ethics Committee. A separate team of lawyers is also looking into the hub and clutch-housing problem at Mitsubishi Fuso. The findings of this investigation will also be reported to the Business Ethics committee. After the reports have been made to the committee, MMC will make the findings public as soon as possible.

MMC wishes to apologize for the trouble it has caused through the recent recall problems and would like to thank everyone who helped out and provided guidance throughout its extended investigations.