Product Safety
Approach to Product Safety
Epson has established unified Epson Group regulations governing quality assurance and product safety management to help ensure that it offers the same product quality to customers around the world.
Our product safety and environmental compliance requirements are set forth in the Epson Quality Standard (EQS), a set of unified standards implemented across the entire Epson Group. EQS specifies independent controls that we widely implement to meet or exceed legal and regulatory requirements in each country. Epson will take action to minimize safety and security risks involving our products and services, for example by painstakingly evaluating safety in every area to prevent the occurrence or recurrence of product incidents.
| Key Actions (KPIs) | Results | Target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | |
| No. of serious incidents1 | 0 | 0 | Keep at 0 each year |
1 Serious incidents: Accidents resulting from product defect that cause serious harm to the product user's life and/or body or that cause serious damage to assets other than the product.
Epson Group Basic Policy on Product Safety
Seiko Epson Corporation and the Epson Group recognize that securing customer trust in the safety of the products we manufacture and sell is an important management task. We have established the Epson Group Basic Policy on Product Safety below based on the Epson Group's management philosophy, which articulates our commitment to customer satisfaction, and actively work to ensure product safety as our top priority.
Safety Assurance Program Organization
Epson is promoting product safety assurance initiatives and promptly responding to product incidents under the Group-wide quality assurance program organization.
Additionally, for each of our products and services, we ensure conformity to EQS, the Group's unified quality standard, from the planning, development, and design stages and conduct risk assessments on new elements to ensure product safety in the product build-in stage.
Process for Rapidly Responding to Product Incidents
If there is an incident involving a product, an Epson sales company or market support organization immediately issues a preliminary report using the Epson Group's Quality Crisis Management (QCM) system.
Departments are notified of the incident via the QCM system, and the quality assurance department of the operations division or affiliated company rapidly responds by analyzing the cause and planning countermeasures. The chief executive and affected departments, including those at corporate Head Office, exchange information whenever an incident occurs and, putting the needs of the customers first, announce the incident to the public, provide market support, and furnish outside organizations with official reports and notices required by all applicable laws and regulations of each country.
Epson has established standards that define procedures for responding to product incidents, and regularly reviews the emergency communication network among divisions to maintain a system that can respond appropriately and promptly.
Analyses to Prevent Product Incidents
Electronic components procured for use in Epson products, and especially those that are crucial in terms of safety, are evaluated and analyzed to judge their quality, safety and reliability.
Epson has set up a combustion laboratory that enables it to conduct tests that cannot be performed in ordinary laboratories, such as tests that use flames or could cause parts or products to ignite, emit smoke, or rupture. In this lab Epson analyzes the causes of incidents and researches combustion-resistant structures and materials. We use the findings from these and other tests and studies to develop standards for creating safe, secure products, therefore seeking to prevent product-related incidents.
We also conduct regular education programs, such as online courses held throughout the year for all employees to learn product safety-related knowledge and raise awareness, and product safety education conducted each year for new technical employees involved in design, development, production engineering, and quality assurance, which mainly consists of risk assessment exercises (conducted nine times in FY2023). In addition, we are working to further improve the awareness and skills of our employees through specialized training programs focused on machine safety and functional safety.
Epson uses analytic techniques learned and honed over the years to analyze in-market safety incidents and determine root cause. The lessons learned are shared throughout the Epson Group to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.
Establishing an evaluation environment for delivering safe and secure products
Epson has established testing facilities that comply with official standards such as radio wave and electrical safety standards, as well as related product laws and regulations, in order to evaluate the safety of our products accurately and in detail.
We have also earned accreditation based on ISO/IEC1 and other standards to enable us to conduct official certification tests in-house. Through periodic internal and external audits, we maintain and manage such accreditation to ensure that we can continue to achieve high-precision measurements. Specifically, we have introduced facilities such as large radio-frequency anechoic chambers, shieled room, and other facilities that we own in Japan and overseas, to enable in-house conducting of EMC testing.2
1 IEC is an acronym for the International Electrotechnical Commission. It is an organization for international standardization that establishes standards for electrical and electronic technology.
2 Electromagnetic compatibility testing. Electromagnetic interference testing to measure interference waves, i.e., electromagnetic waves radiated or conducted from the product itself or power supply that interferes with the operation of other devices, and electromagnetic immunity testing to evaluate the resistance of the product itself to malfunction due to electromagnetic waves generated by nearby electrical equipment.
Safety Evaluations on Substances Released by Products
Products can sometimes release trace amounts of chemical substances during use.
Epson goes beyond simply evaluating releases of controlled substances specified under the requirements for environmental labels such as Japan's Eco Mark and Germany's Blue Angel1, and also evaluates the level and safety of substances for which the Japanese Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has issued indoor concentration guideline values2.
Epson seeks to deliver safe, secure printers, projectors, and other products by verifying that releases from these products meet Epson Quality Standard (EQS), a set of unified standards implemented across the entire Epson Group.
The EQS sets Epson's strict, independent standards that exceed the rigorousness of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's indoor concentration guideline values.
In March 2024, we acquired ISO/IEC17025 laboratory accreditation3 in order to maintain and improve the testing technology capabilities of our in-house testing laboratory, enabling us to achieve more reliable measurements.
1 Blue Angel, introduced in Germany in 1978, is the world's first environmental label.
2 Indoor concentration guideline values are the levels of airborne chemical substances that are considered to be unlikely to have harmful personal health effects even if persons take in throughout life the substances at the indicated concentrations.
3 ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratories certify the technical competence of laboratories that perform specific types of tests such as analysis and measurement and calibration of measuring instruments by a laboratory accreditation body operating under ISO/IEC 17011, and the competence of laboratories that have obtained accreditation is recognized internationally.
Product Information Security Initiatives
Once reserved for laser, business inkjet, and other office printers, network connectivity is now routinely provided with home inkjet printers and other consumer devices, which can be accessed via wireless LANs, smartphones, tablets, and other Wi-Fi-capable equipment. Network connectivity is a great convenience, but it also exposes users to security risks, such as cyber-attacks that could lead to the destruction of data or the theft of confidential information by persons or organizations who exploit network device software vulnerabilities1.
To ensure the security of Epson products, Epson evaluates the vulnerability of embedded software, printer drivers, and other software based on information security requirements included in the Epson Quality Standard (EQS). Requirements for web services such as Epson Email Print were also included in the EQS, in 2012.
1 Software vulnerabilities are system flaws or design problems that hackers or other cyber-criminals can use to hijack a computer, network, or other information system or to steal or alter confidential information.
Official Account
