— The Business Ethics Committee, an advisory body for the Mitsubishi Motors board of directors, held its eleventh meeting at the Shinagawa Headquarters Monday, January 24. (Professional counselor Yamamoto who was appointed at the 10th meeting, was present).
At the meeting, the progress of compliance processes as well as the investigation into the recall problem by a group of outside lawyers were presented.
With regard to the progress of compliance processes:
As for the series of compliance actions that started with the pledges made by the President and the Chairman, MMC reported that the pledge was also sworn to by all employees and a request was made to evaluate the degree of acceptance by employees.
The advice and comments from the committee are as follows:
- The word compliance does not function by staying as a piece of knowledge possessed by executives and employees. You must plan for it to become a standard part of each person's behavior in detail. For example, based on the discussions held at workplaces, each employee should reaffirm the importance of compliance and staff should periodically submit pledges, to establish the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Action) cycle.
- Currently, the 5 Basic Rules (arrangement, order, cleaning, cleanliness and training) are being implemented at the factories. As for the explanation at the factories, you should not regard compliance as a completely different matter but as the extension of these 5 Basic Rules so that each employee fully understands.
- It is important that each employee should be aware of compliance and that they behave appropriately, and at the same time, it is important to establish the mechanism for the sharing of compliance related information that reaches all employees, including management.
- For the compliance action program for Fiscal year 2005, please decide once you have discussed the issue with the committee. (There was an action program drawn up before the committee began sitting during this fiscal year)
Concerning the investigation by the team of outside lawyers into the facts of the recall problem.
Presently, additional hearing are being held, and the investigation is scheduled to terminate at the end of March.
The advice and comments from the committee are as follows:
- It is understood from last year's renewed investigation that those concerned at Mitsubishi Motors are being questioned and that the investigation is proceeding.
- Based on this investigation, you have to determine how to dispose of the matter internally, make reform measures and take moral responsibility as soon as possible. You must accelerate the move to the future time, and you must impress upon customers that the company is in touch with its customers, and with all of your strength show that Mitsubishi Motors has truly been 'reborn'.
The twelfth meeting of the business ethics committee has been scheduled for February 22.
Noboru Matsuda
Business Ethics Committee Chairman
