Striving for safety and peace of mind in design and production

Never Make an Unsafe Product: Safety Throughout the Product Lifecycle

Lessons learned from recent product safety problems, notably incidents involving FF-type kerosene heaters, have led to a significant shift in the approach taken to product safety by Panasonic.
The Company has started the practice of organizing small study groups to analyze safety issues with the aim of revising and upgrading relevant safety standards. Efforts are being made across Panasonic to ensure the safety of each product made.

Panasonic organizes small study groups to examine safety issues as part of ongoing efforts to entrench a safety-first attitude and to raise awareness of related issues. In "Quality Management Seminar for Top Executives", directors of manufacturing divisions are studying quality management for product safety first. Also in "Quality Management Seminar for key manufacturing personnel",managers of engineering, manufacturing and quality are studying quality management to secure product safety having sence of unity. In our activities for product safety design training, respective team leaders from production and design operations study actual examples of failures in Panasonic and other companies, company-wide standards for ensuring produce safety, and scientific methods for preventing product safety incidents.

The end of life for a product is the time when it no longer functions properly. To date, product design has tended to focus mainly on how to make items that will not fail. Based on the view that all products will reach an end-of-life situation at some point, the approach is shifting to emphasize from the design stage onward how to ensure safety when a product either fails or otherwise undergoes recycling or disposal.

"What sorts of risks are associated with a product?" Panasonic tackles this question by conducting analyses using scientific methods to identify risks from multiple perspectives. Efforts are then made to reduce or eliminate those risks identified.

After risk analysis of product designs based on end-of-life assumptions, in the final stage, products are subjected to trials to test ways in which they could finally fail. Any product whose safety cannot be guaranteed at this stage does not make it to market. In this way, Panasonic tries to ensure that no unsafe product is ever made.

Panasonic has developed scientific evaluation techniques such as accelerated degradation testing to study the durability of materials. In collaboration with materials suppliers, Panasonic gathers this information into a database. These data and other market-based information received from service representatives are incorporated periodically into the Panasonic Corporation Safety Standards (PCSS) to ensure that such standards are comprehensive. In particular, standards relating to key safety-related aspects such as long-term usage, inflammability and measures to prevent toppling have been upgraded.

Japan's amended Consumer Product Safety Law was announced on November 21, 2007 and enacted on April 1, 2009. One result is the establishment of a system of safety inspections for consumer products used for a long time. To prevent accidents that may occur as products age, companies are required to perform inspections and provide other assistance to customers for products designated by this law (designated maintenance products).

For electrical products, this law mandates such assistance for two products: built-in electrical dishwashers and electrical dryers for bathrooms. Under the law, customers who purchase one of these products must submit an ownership form to the specified manufacturer or other party. This party retains the form and notifies customers when inspections are to be performed. Inspections are then conducted for a fee as requested by the customer.

Designated maintenance products must be identified by labels on the products, their remote controls and other components. The labels also show the maintenance period.

Panasonic bathroom dryers notify customers of inspection times by displaying a flashing "C" for "check" in the dryer's remote control display. This system ensures that customers will never forget to request an inspection. The display inspection notification system is to be incorporated in Panasonic built-in dishwashers starting with the next series of new models.

• Panasonic's Universal Design
• Basic approach
• The Panasonic Universal Design Policy and Six Elements
• The universal design promotion system