For Business (Material Procurement)

Introduction

・ West Japan Railway Company (JR-West) was formed with the split-up and privatization of Japanese National Railways in April 1987. In addition to its mainly rail-based transportation business serving 18 prefectures in the western half of the island of Honshu and the northern tip of the island of Kyushu, we also engage in businesses such as retail and real estate.
・ In recognition of the Fukuchiyama Line train accident that occurred on April 25 2005, the West Japan Railway Company has continued to implement a company-wide effort to instill a corporate culture that prioritizes safety. This initiative is driven by our Corporate Philosophy and Safety Charter, which were formulated with input from all employees in the wake of the Fukuchiyama Line accident.
・ In April 2018, we began implementing “JR-West Group Medium-Term Management Plan 2022” and “JR-West Group Safety Think-and-Act Plan 2022”. In that medium-term management plan, we continues to place topmost priority on what we consider to be our three pillars of management; measures to reassure victims of the accident that we are acting in their best interests; safety enhancement measures; and measures to enhance corporate reforms, and we also continues to incorporate slogan that encapsulates our core strategies to attain this goal: “Our Future Direction – The Ideal Approach for JR-West.”
・ With a declining population and intensifying competition with other means of transportation, we are facing an even more difficult time to anticipate our business environment. With this in mind, we make it a basic principle to carefully consider various conditions such as market fluctuations, demand, and the inventory situation, and to purchase “high quality materials” from “the best suppliers” within “a suitable time frame” and at “an appropriate price” in order to fulfill our managerial requirements to give the highest priority to safe and reliable transportation services while implementing the above management policies.
・ To achieve this aim, JR-West will apply the principle of non-discrimination between suppliers both in Japan and overseas to its procurement activities, and will work actively to procure high-quality materials based on economical rationality such as our stakeholder value, company value and a perspective of benefit.