Sharp specifies the quality levels it guarantees to customers, thus ensuring that all employees aim for the same targets in their ongoing pursuit of quality improvement.
Sharp bases in Japan and abroad (manufacturing divisions and subsidiaries) have obtained the ISO9000 certification of international quality, as well as adopted Sharp Group's proprietary quality guarantee standards.

With respect to product safety, the Sharp Group observes its own strict standards for technical safety, in addition to carefully following the safety standards and regulations of all the countries it is active in.

To ensure quality, reliability and safety that go well beyond customer expectations, Sharp implements the following procedures at the design stage.

1. Quality engineering (parameter design): Sharp adopts quality engineering (parameter design) to design products that take all possible customer usage and degradation conditions into account.
2. CMM-based original software development model: As more and more products become digital, the demand for more complex and larger-scale software is growing. In creating this software, Sharp has established a development process standard and has formulated an original CMM(*)-based model to evaluate and improve the processes of software development.
3. Double-safety design: To ensure the utmost product safety, Sharp is evolving products in numerous ways. For example, products are designed to use less voltage and amperage, eliminate contact points and employ non-combustibles. And should a malfunction actually occur, double-safety designs are in place to prevent the problem from causing an accident.

*1 CMM: Capability Maturity Model. A method to improve the quality and processes in software development.

To manufacture products that meet the high quality, reliability and safety standards targeted in the design stage, Sharp has established the following procedures during the production stage.

1. Guarantee of procured parts and materials: To ensure that suppliers provide only parts and materials that meet strict standards for quality, Sharp clearly outlines its standards and signs quality guarantee agreements with suppliers. Sharp also conducts inspections to confirm the quality of parts and materials being received.
2. Product shipping inspection control: In addition to the final inspections carried out by production departments, Sharp's quality departments conduct random inspections to confirm that products to be shipped meet Sharp's strict quality standards. Also, to search for defects in the initial usage stage, as well as epidemic defects or dispersion of quality at the mass production stage, Sharp conducts complete burn-in testing in the manufacturing process and further first-lot reliability burn-in tests.
3. Quality guarantee of stored items: By selecting storage locations with optimal environmental conditions and following the "first-in, first-out" principle, Sharp aims to prevent quality deterioration, damage and wrongful usage of stored items such as parts, materials and half-finished goods.

To determine whether products have achieved the quality, reliability and safety targeted in the design stage, Sharp carries out the following tests and evaluations.

1. Long-term reliability confirmation: Through accelerated product-life tests using the HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) device and multi-environment testing devices, Sharp is able to confirm the reliability of products over a long duration of use.
2. Safety confirmation: Combustion tests and safety evaluation tests are used to confirm that products are absolutely safe. Sharp is also working to pioneer new testing methods.
3. Investigation into the cause of malfunctions: If any malfunction occurs in a product during the above-mentioned testing or evaluation, Sharp analyzes the problem at a molecular/elemental level to identify the root cause. The results are then stored in a database so they can be incorporated into improvements of the concerned product and also future product development.

Sharp has introduced X-ray CT (computed tomography) scanning, a method commonly used in medical checkups, as a means of examining products internally to detect potential problems. Parts and materials that are currently being considered for use undergo both accelerated life tests (HALT) and internal X-ray CT scans. And because products can be examined internally without being subjected to disassembly, these parts and materials can go through repeated rounds of HALT, enabling reliability evaluations and long-term accelerated life testing. Sharp also uses other devices for scientific analysis to refine testing further with the aim of achieving zero malfunctions.

To establish whether products actually meet customer expectations and to fuel future product improvements, Sharp carries out the following activities.

1. Reflecting repair information in products: Repair details and information gathered from customer inquiries are swiftly fed back to the related manufacturing division; this enables the departments in charge to investigate and incorporate data into product and system improvements.
2. Solutions at the site: For certain products, if a quality problem should arise immediately after its entry into the market, a Sharp employee is quickly dispatched to the product location to identify the usage conditions and operating environment with the aim of solving the problem on the spot.

Cycle of quality guarantee activities