Sustainable Procurement Activities

To promote sustainable procurement activities, the Fujifilm Group has designated a Sustainable Procurement Promotion Program that is run cyclically in the following four steps.

To help our suppliers gain an understanding of the Fujifilm Group’s CSR approach and requirements, instead of just disclosing our Code of Conduct and Procurement Policy on our website, we hold supplier briefings to explain our policies and standards directly, and request for their compliance. To go even further, we also send out our Code of Conduct to the suppliers and receive their consent forms on a regular basis to disseminate our approach.

To identify sustainability-related risks and issues concerning suppliers, the Fujifilm Group conducts regular risk assessments and requests suppliers to carry out self-checks.

We conduct such risk assessments primarily targeting the following suppliers:

• Critical suppliers determined by factors such as procurement amount and/or substitutability of the provided items
• Suppliers located in high-risk regions^*1 such as China and Asia
• Suppliers in labor-intensive business areas with assembly processes known to have a structurally higher risk of human rights issues.

To better detect and respond to sustainability-related risks in our supply chain and enable early response, we have started utilizing external risk screening services since the fiscal year 2022. We are conducting screenings to assess compliance with regulations from environmental, social and governance perspectives in our supply chain.

In addition to the self-checks described in section (2), an onsite risk assessment takes place individually for high-risk suppliers—determined by the self-check results and day-to-day procurement practices. Following the assessment, we submit improvement requests as needed and provide support for such improvements.　In China and Asia, our internal expert teams conduct onsite visit and check for sustainability activities by the supplier and provides advice on making improvements. We position this onsite review by expert teams as equivalent to a Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) audit. Based on the check results, we encourage the suppliers to proceed with improvements, and thereby promote the Fujifilm Group’s sustainable procurement methods across the whole supply chain.

• *1 The Fujifilm Group identifies risk areas within its supply chain from the viewpoint of sustainability by analyzing the regional environment, social risks and the relevant regulations in countries and regions.

The Fujifilm Group disseminated its Requests to Suppliers (Fujifilm Group Charter of Corporate Behavior and Code of Conduct) and collected consent forms from 733 suppliers.

We requested critical suppliers to carry out self-checks. The self-check list was revised in fiscal 2022 to cover questions concerning the Technical Intern Training Program and the Specified Skilled Worker Program to understand the usage status of these programs by suppliers in Japan. We also expanded the self-check coverage and this resulted in self-check responses from 774 suppliers (1,262 sites), which was about twice that of last year (response rate of 92%). The fiscal 2022 self-check results did not find any significant risks related to child labor, forced labor, or freedom of association.

Further, the “information security survey (self-check)” also started in fiscal 2022 for critical suppliers. In response to reports that cyberattacks on supply chains were now affecting some other companies production activity and supplies, we conducted a survey on security risk countermeasures at suppliers. The number of responding suppliers was 722.

For all suppliers that conducted self-checks and responded to the information security survey, we sent a feedback sheet that included a score compared to the overall average (conformance rate) or evaluation level, and advice on how to address and improve any identified issues. Further, for suppliers where non-conformance was identified for high priority items, we held follow-up interviews etc. with them to understand the actual situation, ask for improvements as nessesary and confirm the improvement status.

Reviewing self-check results, efforts in regard to QCD, environment and so forth, we judged that we need to conduct risk assessment on 42 suppliers located in China and Vietnam. Expert teams from our production sites provided onsite visit and check to 24 suppliers out of 42. Since some of the planned onsite visits were canceled due to the pandemic of COVID-19, the achievement rate was lower than usual, as was the case last year.

In onsite visits during fiscal 2022, as usual we visited suppliers' production sites and their employee dormitories. We also inspected their labor agreements and related documents.

We confirmed that critical issues were improved by the end of that fiscal year for all suppliers where onsite assessments had been conducted.

Japan’s logistics industry faces serious social issues, such as long working hours by courier drivers, death from overworking, and environmental and safety issues caused by poorly maintained vehicles. These problems are caused by the increasing trend of internet shopping and the surge in home delivery demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020.

FUJIFILM Logistics Co., Ltd., which is in charge of logistics operations for the Fujifilm Group, has been requesting its logistics partners (direct suppliers) to cooperate in our sustainable procurement for logistics in Japan since fiscal 2009. Through such requests, logistics partners conduct sustainability self-checks and if their conformance rate is less than 90%, FUJIFILM Logistics visits the partner company to offer advice for correction. In fiscal 2022, we requested 111 suppliers to conduct self-checks and collected the results from all suppliers. The remaining COVID-19 impact limited our support and visits to partner companies that had less than a 90% conformance rate. However, we were able to confirm that the improvement on identified issues had been implemented in those companies we visited.

In fiscal 2022, FUJIFILM Logistics focused on improving logistics efficiency through cross-industrial collaboration.
Collaboration enabled “long-distance relay trucking,” where multiple drivers change over after covering a set intermediate distance. Relay trucking reduced both the number of vehicles and working hours, as well as minimizing the long-hour working resulting from long-distance single driver transportation.

FUJIFILM Logistics is strengthening cooperation not only with direct suppliers, but also with indirect suppliers— i.e. subcontractors. In fiscal 2022, as in the previous year, FUJIFILM Logistics shared the Fujifilm Group’s COVID-19 countermeasures with direct and indirect suppliers.

Since fiscal 2020, FUJIFILM Logistics has been using the GoStop Management System, a logistics service provided by the Japan Weather Association, to support transportation safety in bad weather. We provide our partners with information gained from the system, such as bad weather forecasts and other data that helps determine whether it is necessary to cancel transportation. In fiscal 2022, there were no accidents caused by natural disasters.

Over the years, due to the nature of our founding business, the Fujifilm Group has been working to reduce the environmental impact from our business throughout the product life cycle, from material procurement, manufacturing, transportation, and use, to final disposal. Particularly in material procurement, we are expanding the scope of efforts to include our suppliers through the structure of sustainable procurement.

We conducted CSR self-checks at eight production sites of the Business Innovation business across the world, and confirmed that all sites observed over 90% compliance. The results of the RBA self-assessment questionnaire (conducted at seven sites) also stayed at “Low” risk for all sites.

In the Business Innovation business, we use the line stop time in our manufacturing process caused by sustainabilityrelated problems at our suppliers as our self-check index. There were zero line stops caused by sustainability-related problems for the eighth consecutive year since fiscal 2015 in FUJIFILM Manufacturing Shenzhen (China), and for the seventh consecutive year since fiscal 2016 in FUJIFILM Manufacturing Hai Phong (Vietnam).

Fujifilm Group's main production sites have been undergoing audits under the Validated Assessment Program (VAP)
of the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA)^*3, which is dedicated to CSR in global supply chains. 

• *3 RBA (Responsible Business Alliance / Virginia USA) See RBA’s website for details.

As of December 2023, FUJIFILM Corporation has received the Bronze Medal and FUJIFILM Business Innovation Corporation has received the Platinum Medal from EcoVadis^*4, a business sustainability ratings provider.

• *4 EcoVadis: The EcoVadis Sustainability Rating evaluates companies' policies and initiatives in four categories: Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement.