Third-Party Comment

Reading the Kobe Steel Group Sustainability Report 2012, I was struck that this year's CSR report has been much improved over last year's edition. Going beyond last year's focus on "cooperation with the local community," the Kobe Steel Group has broadened its horizons to focus on "contributing to society." There is a clear emphasis on monozukuri in particular, a keyword that runs throughout the report, underlining the way in which the group views its relationship with society. This also helps the content as a whole to flow together more organically than previously. It would be fair to say that this year's report really clarifies the Kobe Steel Group's concept of CSR management.

This concept is embodied most clearly in the special feature at the start of the report. The feature looks at both disaster prevention and recovery technologies, based on "protecting people through monozukuri," and a wide range of energy-saving and energy-creating technologies, as typified by the group's Microbinary system. Dealing with topics of current interest such as these effectively captures the Kobe Steel Group's commitment to innovation across a wide range of sectors.

The social section of the report comes back to the same concept. As well as recognizing that providing outstanding products and services is a crucial part of the group's social dimension, the report emphasizes the group's underlying monozukuri-ryoku, or manufacturing capabilities, in terms of continually providing trustworthy technologies, products and services. This is an important message that runs consistently throughout the report. Compared to last year, the group has significantly expanded the report's social content in various different ways. The social section begins by clarifying the group's relationships with its stakeholders for instance, and also takes an in-depth look at the group's ongoing community oriented activities in other countries. This is another of the key features of this year's report.

Although the report still relies on specialist knowledge to some extent, the group has been trying to include readers who may not have such specialist knowledge for several years now, by making material flow charts, divisional environmental impact data and other figures easier to understand. Those efforts are really starting to show through. Including photos alongside comments from employees and other stakeholders meanwhile is a very nice touch that gives the report a sense of individuality.

Although improvements such as these reflect stakeholders' needs on the whole and deserve a great deal of praise, I would say that there is still room for improvement in one respect. The report tends to shy away from references to the group's supply chain, which is something that a lot of companies are focusing on at the moment and an area of great public interest. References to energy-saving initiatives in distribution allude to all the hard work being done in this area, and the Kobe Steel Group clearly has advanced technological capabilities that could help prevent overexploitation of limited resources, epitomized by ITmk3^®. With that in mind, the group really needs to spell out its philosophy and position with regard to its supply chain.

I commented that last year's report was the Kobe Steel Group's most complete sustainability report to date. The group's 2012 report however is an even more complete package, revolving clearly around universal concepts that capture the Kobe Steel Group's spirit of "contributing to society through monozukuri."