Relationships with Suppliers
We build equitable ties with business partners and maintain a fair and honest supply chain.
Fair Transactions and Procurement
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Commitment to Fair Trade
We aim to build social trust for our operations. We forge mutually respectful, open, and beneficial relationships with business partners. We increase trust by ensuring equal respect for corporate cultures and business practices and by clarifying roles and responsibilities.
Instead of simply prioritizing our own interests, we seek to grow professionally with our business partners.
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Basic Procurement Policies
We buy high-quality products transparently at reasonable prices from around the world in keeping with three basic policies. The first is to purchase openly and transparently in keeping with our business requirements. The second is to give domestic and overseas vendors equal opportunities to compete for our business. The third is to use global standards and market principles to procure competitive products that meet our business needs.
We must buy quality products economically and in a timely manner so we can improve our competitiveness. We accordingly maintain a website that details our procurement policies, purchasing contacts, and procedures for suppliers. We will remain committed to purchasing fairly and competitively from the global marketplace.
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Fair Trade Initiatives
An employee-made poster displayed in our cafeterias
Some of our employee cafeterias began serving Fair Trade coffee in December 2006.
We aim to contribute to the world by informing customers and employees about Fair Trade mechanisms and products, as part of which we plan to provide Fair Trade offerings at other cafeterias.
■Government Relations
We will help make the Internet safer and more secure by collaborating in governmental research and development and educational programs.
Contributing to National Research and Development
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Research Projects for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
We ran several research and development projects for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in fiscal 2006. One project focused on advanced network authorization platform technologies. We embedded leading-edge Internet security tools in platforms to benefit subscribers and service providers alike. We have already obtained five patents from this project, made five announcements, and have supplied one technology license.
Another project explored ways to stop spamming, as well as phishing and other cyber attacks. We worked with several Internet service providers and security vendors to create schemes to continuously survey, analyze, and combat botnets and other threats.
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Research projects for the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
We are working on a project to create decision-making frameworks that support decentralized security systems by mutual monitoring sites and thereby ensuring secure intranet management. This project has generated two patents and four announcements. As part of this project, we developed models to quantify vulnerability and threat levels, and have innovated predictive methodologies to detect abnormalities and techniques to coordinate website operations.
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Participating in e-Net Caravan
While increasing convenience, information technology advances have created many social problems, such as computer viruses, spamming, fraudulent payment demands, and personal information leaks. Private telecommunications organizations, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science, and Technology responded by forming e-Net Caravan. That body sends experts to educate children, students, guardians, and teachers free of charge about the Internet. Six of our people delivered lectures in fiscal 2006.
See the following Japanese-language website for details:http://www.fmmc.or.jp/e-netcaravan/
