Committed to uncompromising quality, we established an organization-wide framework to maintain a high level of hardware quality. Our product planning, R&D, production, quality control/assurance, sales, and maintenance/customer service functions align with each other and with external business partners to collaborate and ensure thorough quality control and enhancement.
Quality control and assurance throughout the value chain
Product planning
- We collect, analyze and examine quantitative and qualitative data to plan products that meet customers’ real and latent needs.
- We identify values we should offer customers and incorporate them into our product design.
A regular global R&D meeting
Comment from R&D
"We at R&D visit the actual worksites of customers to observe their operation and settings with our own eyes. The user’s viewpoint is essential for us in simulating their use. What happens when it is used a certain way? Is it intuitive? Is it easy to use for everyone? The best way to know is to see it. Teiho* is another important tool for us. When we design a new product, we read at least 1,000 Teiho reports related to the subject to know responses from customers as well as sales and maintenance staff to understand what people expect in the new product."
(Staff, Value Creation (R&D) Department)
*A system for employees to submit and put into action original ideas, innovations and proposals to make the company better. Findings from customer feedback or market information are submitted to top management, and serve as our driving force for important decisions and changes.
R&D
- We study the customer’s use, the function, performance and structure of the product as well as manufacturing techniques and processes to derive optimal designs. Designs are evaluated according to SATO Group’s own design standards that comply with safety standards and laws of each country and region.
- We make prototypes and run a variety of tests, conducting design reviews to check compliance with quality and customer requirements and ensure that all the design specifications can be replicated in the production process.
Testing a product under development in various temperature and humidity
Validating printer-label match
Using a vibration tester to assess how shocks and shakes during transportation affect a product
Performing regular, post-marketing reliability tests
Production
- Quality is strictly controlled during the production process as well. We particularly check for compliance to correct manufacturing steps and rules and our print quality standard.
- We select suppliers of our key parts based on quality audits we conduct considering business continuity and on the reliability of the parts, which must meet our quality standards.
- Our hardware factories in Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Taiwan and Japan are certified ISO 9001. We continuously upgrade the effectiveness of our quality management system and compliance of our production processes.
Sales and after-sales services
- We have a framework to share customer feedback that our salespeople, customer engineers and business partners receive worldwide with relevant departments to improve product quality and usability.
- We collect and analyze information on defects and malfunctions to find major quality issues at an early stage or ideally before they cause any problems. Any safety concern can be traced back to parts and materials procurement, production, shipping and logistics from a single serial number.
- The Risk Management Committee, comprised of members from across the company, serves as the group’s internal control function. Our risk management rules specify that any serious quality risk must be reported to the Risk Management Committee and the management within 24 hours for the entire company to resolve in the earliest possible manner.
