Fostering Resonac’s Corporate Culture
Our progress toward the inculcation of the Purpose and Values
STEP①Roundtable Discussion
In the first year, visits were made to over 70 plants and sales offices under the theme of thorough communication, and more than 100 roundtable discussions and town-hall meetings were held. We received a lot of feedback from employees that they didn’t understand our Purpose and Values, or the vision for the future of the integrated company. Therefore, we focused on thoroughly communicating the thoughts and feelings of the management team.
STEP②Moyamoya Meeting
We held Moyamoya Meeting in the second year. We had feedback that employees wanted interactive communications with management and felt that our culture made it difficult to speak up. Therefore, we implemented a program in which employees shared their moyamoya (frustrations) and engage in discussion with management to solve them.
STEP③Purpose Exploration Café
In the third year, when employees had a basic understanding of the Purpose and Values, and our culture of co-creation had begun to take root, we began holding Purpose Exploration Cafe in order to make the Purpose a personal concern, thereby facilitating autonomy among our employees. Participants reflect on their past and receive feedback from others through dialogue. This helps them to gain an awareness of their own purpose as well as a deeper sense of purpose.
From Value to Action: Introducing Examples of Resonac’s Value Implementation
1.Drastic reduction in defect rate through Value implementation activities that combine development, technical management, and quality assurance! Continuing to uphold zero accidents!
At one plant, members from development, production technology, technical management*, and quality assurance departments come together to hold regular meetings aimed at reducing defects without being constrained by departmental boundaries. At daily morning meetings that include employees from these departments, all attendees reviewed all product defects that had occurred the previous day and made immediate decisions on the actions to be taken that day. Such improvement activities focused on speed led to a significant reduction in in-process defects. As a result of another integrated activities, when launching new products, members of the relevant departments are involved from the initial prototype stage of development to eliminate problems in advance. By doing so, we ensure quality and productivity after transitioning to mass production. These initiatives were also encouraged by a head of a plant, with comments like, “Since we have these values, let’s try changing the way we do things to align with them!” These initiatives have created a positive atmosphere within our plants, leading to the achievement of zero accidents in 2024 and a 14-point increase in the engagement score from the previous year.
2.Thoroughly analyzing the causes of low engagement scores at plants! Listening to the voices of on-site employees to improve the work environment!
One manufacturing plant had a lower engagement score than other sites. After analyzing the cause by item and department, we recognized the need to listen to the voices of employees working on site. Starting with town-hall meetings and roundtable discussions led by CEO Takahashi and CHRO Imai, the management team and members of various departments immediately visited the site to talk to on-site employees, including CMEO/CQO Shimpo to discuss safety and manufacturing and CFO Somemiya to discuss investments. This enabled us to identify a number of issues. At our plants, we not only increase the amount of communication along lines such as section manager - subsection chief - senior staff – team leader, but also conduct training aimed at improving the quality of one-on-one feedback. Additionally, we have begun an initiative to collect employee feedback by setting up a virtual suggestion box in order to reform work styles and improve the on-site work environment. The results are also starting to show in engagement scores as well.
①Roundtable with CEO and CHRO ②Rouundtable with CMEO/CQO and CFO
3.Environmentally-friendly R&D and business operations! Working on sustainability through future-oriented workshops
Since 2024, we are holding Sustainability Day, where the CSuO visits sites in Japan and overseas with the aim of fostering a sustainability mindset among employees and making sustainability everyone’s concern. To date, we have held nine such events both in Japan and overseas, including town-hall meetings, small roundtable discussions, and workshops on the environment, compliance and regional contribution. At the Sustainability Day for research and development employees held in February 2025, we conducted a workshop on the theme of “What is environmentally-friendly R&D?” Based on the ideas of the participants, such as processes that reduce electricity consumption by simplified and low-temperature manufacturing processes, and reducing environmental impact throughout the product lifecycle including R&D stage, we have kicked off efforts aimed at changing society through the power of chemistry.
Workshop scene
Co-creation born and expanded through “Global Award AHA!”
In order to promote the implementation of Values, we are implementing AHA! (Awards of Harmony), a global award that all Resonac Group employees can submit preliminary entries to. Cross-organizational teams establish declarations of action based on our Purpose and Values, set targets and concrete initiatives, and submit entries themselves. Teams are allowed to take on initiatives that were not initially set and to increase the number of team members in order to achieve their declaration of action. Afterwards, during the team exchange event, screening, and the award ceremony for the winning teams, we aim to discuss our experiences of the Values practiced in the challenge and empathize with each other. This will serve as a valuable stimulus for further practicing these Values and fostering “co-creation” beyond the framework of the program.In 2024, a total of 997 teams and 12,209 participants from 17 countries and regions took part.
POINT 01Opportunities for personal growth
POINT 02A connection of equals
Case ①Hidden mastermind behind the increase in NCF production: The power of co-creation between HD, image analysis, and NCF!
The Ichihara Plant of the former Showa Denko, which manufactures hard disks (HD), and the Goi Plant of the former Hitachi Chemical, which manufactures insulating adhesive films (NCF), are located about 10 minutes apart by car. Despite this, at the time of the merger the two sites had a “close yet distant” relationship with almost no interaction between them. However, a networking event organized by the Administration Department led to technical exchanges, and from casual daily conversation, we realized that HD image analysis technology could be used in the NCF inspection process, after which co-creation progressed rapidly. Visual inspection of NCFs had previously relied on manual observation through microscopes, and plans to increase production meant a shortage of inspectors was becoming an issue. To address this, we introduced HD image analysis technology to automate and streamline the inspection process. As a result, the labor shortage issue was resolved and the inspection system was strengthened, which contributed greatly to increasing NCF production. Going forward, we aim to deploy this image analysis technology to other plants and expand it into new co-creation activities.
Case ②Stabilization of KPR productivity through visualization using digital technology!
In KPR, a chemical plastic recycling business operated at the Kawasaki Plant, we receive waste plastic collected by municipalities that has been separated and disposed of by consumers, crush it, mold it at high temperatures, and then gasify it to produce ammonia. Waste plastic, the raw material, comes from households, so the quality varies each time. The municipalities that accept it also change every year, making it difficult to grasp trends. Due to these circumstances, digital data is not being fully utilized, causing productivity to be impacted by the experience our personnel have gained over the years. Through this initiative, important information for the manufacturing, production technology, and engineering departments is consolidated into a single database, enabling each department to use the data as a basis for decision-making from the same perspective. These three departments now hold weekly meetings based on the same data to make decisions about operational policies. This has enabled them to successfully create a manual for productivity improvement, which had previously been dependent on individual efforts.
REBLUC, a community where each member explores their passion and purpose, and continuously takes on challenges to realize their vision
We are building an internal community called REBLUC (Resonac Blue Creators) that implements concrete actions to achieve our purpose of changing society through the power of chemistry. At REBLUC, members with various backgrounds engage in dialogue to proactively rethink and refine the purpose they want to achieve. We also collaborate across departments to make new business proposals and improvement activities, and promote co-creation activities with external parties that go beyond the boundaries of our company.The number of participants in REBLUC has reached 66 so far.(As of June 2025)
POINT 01A community that shapes the future
POINT 02Implementation skills to create change
Case ①We want to create new technologies for use in space through the power of chemistry and co-creation!
We have started activities targeting space as a new ambitious business field to take on. Members who want to contribute to society through space-related materials as a part of REBLUC initiatives come together voluntarily to participate projects. Various initiatives are also being conducted outside the company with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), universities, and other companies. In developing semiconductor materials for space applications, we made plans to conduct evaluations on the International Space Station (ISS) and worked on the manufacture of an operational evaluation device. In cooperation with business units, we developed a prototype encapsulant that is expected to suppress operational errors caused by cosmic radiation. Team members also worked together to create IC chips and assemble them onto boards to evaluate their operation. This test device will be launched to the ISS this fall and exposed to space, where it will undergo operational evaluation for approximately six months. If this initiative proves successful, we believe it will expand the processing capabilities of communications satellites and other such devices, enabling decision-making based on advanced calculations anywhere on Earth or in space, thereby helping to enrich our lives.
Case ②Approaching social issues with the power of chemistry I want to show young people what they can achieve!
Born from REBLUC, we at the “Naze Naze Market” aim to change Japan into a place where more people with an aspiration to become scientists are born and gather from around the world by raising awareness of the potential of chemistry to address social issues. We held classes and lectures that would allow students to experience the excitement of chemistry and science, with the premise that anyone who was interested could participate. Starting with a science class event for employees’ families, we also exhibited at the Dream Chemistry-21 Summer Vacation Children’s Chemistry Experiment Show 2024 held at the Science Museum in Tokyo. While our activities led us to realize the importance of communication with outside parties, we also learned that it takes time to share prerequisites and build relationships in order to foster exchanges. Therefore, we created an original board game on the theme of semiconductors, which is largely related to our products, to stimulate communication both inside and outside the company and to explain semiconductors to the next generation of children in an easy-to-understand manner.