The TOMY Group is one hundred percent committed
to creating toys that children can enjoy playing with in absolute safety.
That means ensuring superior quality and safety across all points of
the toy-making process from planning and design through development,
retail and after-sales service. We have pursued superior quality and
safety tirelessly over our 90-year history.
Fostering a strong shared awareness of safety among Group employees,
encouraging tireless debate and checks in our factories,
proactively incorporating valuable customer feedback into future toy-making.
We believe that these are all vital elements for the consistentdevelopment of safe,
fun and attractive toys.
●The “Manufacturing”Value ChainCreating New Value through Play
The TOMY Group holds a Safety Day every year when all employees gather to consider the importance of safety and quality. Footage of the conference is made available to Group companies outside Japan as part of our drive to establish a strong collective awareness of safety across our global operations.
TOMY’s president appoints safety leaders annually. One safety leader is selected from each individual department including development, sales, quality assurance and customer services, and tasked with promoting safe toy manufacture over a one-year term. During that term, safety leaders meet regularly to discuss relevant customer feedback and quality-related developments in the toy industry, and report findings back to their individual departments.
The safety leaders meet regularly for Concentrated Play sessions. As the name suggests, these meetings enable groups of people to explore potential play options for a specific toy in depth. The leaders are on hand to ensure any safety or quality-related concerns are addressed. They verify a toy’s safety by predicting how a child might move and play with it: Could small children get their hand stuck in any part of the toy? Are there any small parts that a child might swallow? Does the toy contain any materials that might be dangerous if the toy breaks? Are the sound levels appropriate? Contributing their individual expertise to a concentrated debate, the safety leaders not only pinpoint and resolve issues, but enhance safety awareness across the TOMY Group.
Toys are a precious source of fun play for children, and, for that very reason, they must never cause injury or accident. The TOMY Group channels considerable resources and energy into creating toys for children to play safely and securely. We do that by systematically aligning the sequential toy-making stages from planning through to production under our own product safety and quality management rules, so we can actively preempt problems and offer greater toy security.
The toy industry has also developed safety standards. A toy must undergo rigorous testing by an independent specialist organization on shape, strength, flammability, and the presence of any harmful substances as stipulated under Japan’s Food Sanitation Act such as heavy metals or phthalic acid. The TOMY Group also tests toys against its own strict safety standards which are based on the Group’s toy-making expertise accumulated over its 90-year history, as well as industry-wide and country-specific safety regulations. We understand safety considerations will change as new forms of play emerge and technology evolves. That’s why we continually update our rules, standards and test parameters to suit changing times and ensure an optimum approach to toy safety.
The Safety Toy mark is displayed on toys that the industry recommends as having been carefully manufactured from a safety perspective
At the same time, it can be difficult to develop fun and exciting toys by focusing on safety alone. For example, to ensure children can play safely with our BEYBLADE BURST range without losing the fun burst feature, internal teams conduct multiple discussions and tests at every stage of the development process from planning, materials procurement, design and mockup, right through to the type of warnings included in the instruction manual or on the website.
To ensure safe play, we disclose safety advice and warnings to customers on the toy packaging and in the instruction manual, as well as on our website. We use pictographs* and other instantly understandable tools to indicate appropriate age range, warnings and cautions.
Our focus on safety continues even after toys have passed into the hands of customers.
Our Customer Service Department responds to about 200,000 e-mail and telephone communications a year from customers seeking advice to offering feedback on specific toy products. To reflect customer feedback in future toy-making, we carefully record and analyze customer comments, identify problem causes and share results with relevant in-house departments.
We are especially attentive to customer concerns about potential injury or accident in relation to a specific toy. The Customer Service Department first ascertains whether a customer is injured or in danger, before conducting a detailed investigation of any near-miss incident in which a child is judged to have played with a toy in a completely unexpected way. The department shares its findings at safety leaders’ meetings or other venues to ensure any necessary measures are incorporated into future toy-manufacturing procedures.
Customer Support Puts Safety First
I am responsible for customer support across the TOMY Group and ensuring we make good use of valuable customer feedback. My daily work focuses primarily on safety, exploring customer reports to discover any possible danger or risk of injury. I work closely with the Safety and Quality Assurance Group to foster stronger understanding of safety within the Group, holding regular training and discussion sessions on reassurance of safety to improve customer satisfaction.
At the TOMY Group,
all employees from development
through customer services work
collectively to guarantee the
safety of our toys.
We are determined to further
improve product quality and
safety to
ensure we continue to
create toys children can enjoy
safely and securely
for many
generations to come.
Perfecting Product Quality Rules to Reflect Core TOMY Psyche
I am responsible for quality assurance across all product stages from planning and development through point of sale. I am also responsible for updating and revising our in-house product quality rules to enhance both the unique enjoyment of TOMY toys and the brand’s dedicated commitment to superior quality toy-making. In testing, we use TOMY’s own quality rules, which are stricter than the industry standards, and imagine how a child might use a toy so we can check its safety more accurately. Pulling this all together is a real challenge, but I feel people across the Group now understand the importance of timely revisions to quality rules. We adhere to these thorough safety management rules every day in our factories in the making of toys that children can really have fun playing with.