Specialty materials manufacturer Toray Industries Company is at the centre of Japan’s latest corporate quality control scandal after it admitted to falsifying inspection data, according to local reports.
In the last few months a number of high-profile Japanese manufacturers, including Nissan Motors, Subaru, Mitsubishi Materials and Kobe Steel, have also been found to have falsified quality data and to have used unqualified staff to carry out quality inspections over a period of years.
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Toray Industries confirmed on Tuesday that its Toray Hybrid Cord Inc wholly-owned subsidiary, which makes tyre reinforcing materials, fabricated quality inspection data over an eight-year period between 2008 and 2016.
It admitted that inspection data had been falsified on tyre cord and other materials supplied to 13 customers, including manufacturers of tyres and other automotive components.
Toray said that none of the 149 cases investigated so far have raised safety concerns or have legal implications, however, but there are still 137 cases across the group still to be checked.
Toray group president Akihiro Nikkaku told reporters that these issues came to light in July 2016, but his company was not in breach of the law and there were no safety concerns.
It was only after Kobe Steel came clean on similar compliance issues last month that Toray decided to make the information public.
