Safety, Disaster Prevention

Management Approach

Policy and approach

Toyobo group recognizes that ensuring health and safety is a precondition for successful corporate activities. We have formulated the Toyobo Group Basic Policy on Health & Safety, which applies not only to our employees but also to the personnel of partner companies (contractors), and we are striving to build a safe workplace environment. Our safety declaration for fiscal 2023 is “We will thoroughly implement 'putting safety first,' and we will emphasize labor safety, environmental safety, product safety, and equipment safety.”

In order to prevent the memory and lessons learned from the fire and fatalities that occurred at our Inuyama Plant on September 27, 2020 from being forgotten, we will continue to observe TOYOBO group Disaster Preparedness Day on September 6. Also, we are designating September as Disaster Preparedness Month to promote the awareness of disaster prevention, including fires.

We will review our safety and disaster prevention activities, and continuously promote “the creation of workplaces and personnel that are strongly equipped to deal with fires” at all group sites to create resilient production bases. We will work together as a group to make concerted efforts to regain the trust of society.

Structure

In order to achieve steady progress in initiatives relating to safety and disaster prevention, which are the most important management issues, we have established the Safety and Disaster Management Division, which is a body reporting directly to the President, with a high degree of decision-making authority.

We have also established the Safety and Disaster Management Committee and the Safety and Disaster Management Promotion Committee under the Sustainability Committee, which deliberate on matters relating to safety and disaster prevention activities, decide on policies, verify progress, and report to the Board of Directors. The Safety and Disaster Management Committee is chaired by the Executive Officer who is head of the Safety and Disaster Management Division, and its members comprise the Co-COO, Senior Managing Executive Officer and Managing Executive Officers responsible for overseeing individual divisions and departments. In addition, Corporate Auditors and other persons appointed by the committee chair can also attend meetings of the committee as observers, and express their views. Ordinary committee meetings are held once a year in principle. The Safety and Disaster Management Promotion Committee meets six times a year, to discuss and decide on concrete matters and manage activity progress status, in accordance with the Basic Policy. The Committee also organizes teams, composed of the committee chair and committee members, which visit individual production centers, plants, and group companies to perform safety and environmental assessments and on-site inspections of activity status.

Furthermore, each production center and plant has its own Health and Safety Committee, which is composed of employee representatives, managers and experts, and which investigates and deliberates on matters relating to employee safety, disaster prevention and health, including risk assessment status, at each workplace.

Labor union representatives also participate in the discussions of the Safety and Disaster Management Promotion Committee and the Health and Safety Committee.

Toyobo Group Structure for Safety, Disaster Prevention, and the Environment

1

Deliberates and decides policy on safety and disaster prevention

2

Deliberates and decides policy on the global environment

3

Deliberates and decides specific matters, and manages progress

4

Supports activities, provides information, and conducts interdepartmental coordination

Targets and KPIs

< Targets >

• We will strive to prevent disasters and accidents by clarifying and thoroughly complying with basic safety throughout the entire Toyobo group.

< KPIs and Results >

• Major accidents: Defined according to internal standards based on the definition stipulated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

Initiatives

Safety initiatives

Under the TOYOBO Group Basic Policy on Health & Safety, we are implementing the following occupational safety initiatives.

Making people, equipment, and processes safer

We identify major sources of potential danger and take steps to prevent major accidents from occurring. We clarify onsite risk, and we make improvements to equipment and procedures on the basis of risk assessments and research procedures. We then include this information in procedure manuals and utilize it in safety education. In cases when an accident does occur, by investigating it, we help to prevent similar accidents from occurring in the future. Additionally, with regard to accidents that occur at other companies and workplaces, we check whether there is a similar risk at our own workplaces and take steps if necessary.

In April 2020, we began to issue “Safety and Disaster Prevention News.” Using the lessons from accidents and disasters that have actually occurred in the past, it helps to spread awareness by providing easy-to-understand explanations, supported by illustrations, regarding key points to note to conduct operations safely, and how to respond in the event of an accident.

In production centers where the foreign technical training system (overseas trainees) is in operation, we have assigned instructors to provide Japanese language education and support for daily life to ensure the safety and livelihood (communication) of the trainees.

As an example, for trainees to work safely, we devise ways to make it easier for them to understand, such as translating the standard operating procedure (SOP) and using hiragana to write the reading kana.

Promotion of disaster prevention

Learning from fire accidents, we have revised the content of our training drills so that they are more practical, and have endeavored to ensure that all workers are able to participate in them at least once a year, in order for everyone to be able to protect their own workplaces in the event of fires.

We will promote reliable measures to enhance disaster prevention at all sites with the aim of creating sites that do not allow fires to occur, and that prevent casualties and minimize other damage if they do occur. To this end, we have formulated fire prevention equipment guidelines and disaster prevention management standards, and we are working to reduce the risk of fires.

With regard to natural disasters, we will continue to implement disaster mitigation measures by reinforcing buildings against earthquakes, improving office and plant infrastructure, and conducting emergency response drills.

3S activities and training

We undertake 3S (sort, sweep, and standardize) activities, which are the foundation for safety and disaster prevention activities, on a company-wide basis. We have put in place a safety and disaster prevention training system that is shared throughout the company, and we provide the safety and disaster prevention training that is needed at each level.

In addition, with the aim of realizing effective safety and disaster prevention knowledge training, we have installed Disaster Prevention Training Workshops—training spaces in which panel-type displays play a central role—in all production centers, and we have established Disaster Prevention Experience Training Facilities at key sites.

Establishment of a disaster prevention training center at the Iwakuni Production Center

With the aim of looking back on and learning from accidents that have occurred in the past, and preventing the lessons from being forgotten, in August 2021 a new Disaster Prevention Training Center was opened at the Iwakuni Production Center, where personnel can experience the terrifying nature of accidents and make use of simulation equipment.

This is a training center, where, for example, besides being able to experience the awfulness of fires and explosions, such as dust explosions and fires caused by static electricity, it is also possible to experience the horror of accidents that involve being pulled into machinery. The center also shares case studies of accidents that have occurred in Toyobo group in the past.

To provide additional opportunities for personnel to enhance their knowledge of and awareness of fires and smoke, and to pay more attention to safety and disaster prevention, we have started internal training and are promoting internal education. Going forward, we will be considering how to put in place a framework that can be utilized effectively throughout Toyobo group.

Frequency Rate of Lost Workday Injuries (Japan)

The Toyobo group is striving to achieve zero accidents in accordance with the TOYOBO Group Basic Policy on Health & Safety. We place importance on the frequency rate of workplace accidents resulting in lost workdays^*1. This was 0.42 in 2021, including affiliated businesses at the same business site.

We have set a goal of zero major incidents^*2 as a KPI, we achieved zero major accidents.

• Frequency rate of workplace accidents resulting in lost workdays refers to the rate of accidents resulting in lost workday injuries per one million hours worked
• Major accidents: Defined according to internal standards based on the definition stipulated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

• Health and Productivity Management Efforts

Fire prevention measures (FY2022)

In the wake of the September 2020 fire accident at the Toyobo Inuyama Plant, the Toyobo group is taking two main approaches to improving safety prevention. We are fostering a culture of safety by clearly establishing safety as the highest priority and revising our education structure. We are also fortifying our safety infrastructure by formulating a plan to enhance our safety and disaster prevention equipment and management and by developing specific PDCA cycles.

Fostering a culture of safety

We had always stated that worksite “safety is the highest priority,” but we now recognized that the problem was that management involvement was insufficient. To foster a deeply imbedded culture of safety, in April 2022 we announced the New Safety Declaration. The New Safety Declaration clarifies for all employee our management stance of placing the highest priority on safety related to occupational labor and conditions, our products, and our equipment. Measures to change our awareness of safety issues include revamping the position-based safety education system and introducing safety workshops and education programs for management level employees led by external organizations. A safety workshop for management-level employees was held in December 2021, with all of the participating company executives having the opportunity to study safety conditions at various companies.

We distributed video footage of the Inuyama Plant fire to each worksite to stimulate discussions about safety and to ensure the lessons learned from the disaster are not forgotten.

Fortifying for safety infrastructure

We continue to apply the PDCA cycle to fortify our safety and disaster prevention infrastructure. The group established the Disaster Management Department and the Occupational Safety Department under the Safety and Disaster Management Division, which is directly overseen by the president, in fiscal 2021. Subsequently, to improve the efficiency and simplify the organization of our safety management, we reorganized the structure and the Safety and Disaster Management Department and Environmental Management Department were brought under the Safety and Disaster Management Division in April 2022.

In fiscal 2022, we also launched a project with safety specialists advising on the formulation of disaster prevention management standards for fire prevention that will apply across the group. The standards were carefully constructed to allow sites to conduct their own inspections in accordance with their specific conditions. We have also added a system for safety specialists to conduct regularly scheduled inspections of the operating conditions at each worksite.

A Medium-term Safety and Disaster Prevention Plan has also been created to avoid the situation of short-term budget planning for business operations leading to postponements of measures and spending for safety and disaster prevention. We worked with external specialists to create detailed risk maps for 15 sites for evaluating the natural disaster risk at each site and to guide the implementation of disaster countermeasures. The risk map will also be used in our planning for future production sites. In addition, we plan to review the disaster prevention measures at all sites and identify sites requiring additional measures for fire containment, such as to prevent a fire from spreading to adjacent buildings. We are preparing a budget with ¥18.6 billion in additional funds to be used for prevention measures by fiscal 2026.

We are also setting up disaster prevention training spaces at all of the group's primary production sites. In August 2021, the Iwakuni Production Center conducted a training program to raise awareness of disaster prevention that included simulating past accidents with reenactments. We plan to set up and utilize more safety training spaces in the future.

Steps to Enhance Our Culture of Safety

• This expression is a quote from the dss+ Bradley curve of the stages of safety culture development
• 3S:Sort, straighten, sweep