Japanese industry this week has been rocked by yet another safety scandal, this time involving raw materials manufacturer Kobe Steel.
The company supplies raw materials to most industrial sectors in Japan, from automotive to aerospace, ship building, railways and construction to name just a few.
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Kobe Steel admitted on Sunday that inspection data had been falsified on aluminum and copper products supplied to around 200 companies over a period of 10 years, according to local reports.
The supplier confirmed inspection data on the strength of materials had been rewritten when customer specifications were not met, mainly by staff under pressure to meet shipment schedules.
Over the last year alone around 4% of the company's aluminium and copper shipments were subjected to fraudulent inspections, including 19,300 tons of aluminium products, 2,200 tons of copper products and 19,400 items of aluminium castings and forged products.
Kobe Steel admitted that data falsification was found at all its aluminium product factories, including in Tochigi, Mie and Yamaguchi prefectures, as well as at a copper product factory in Kanagawa prefecture.
Toyota, Subaru and Mazda are among the automotive companies known to be affected by this latest scandal and have used aluminium supplied by Kobe mainly for vehicle body parts.
Toyota spokesman Takashi Ogawa said the automaker was urgently working to identify which vehicle models and components were affected. Other vehicle manufacturers are looking into whether there are any safety implications.
GM, Ford, Nissan and Honda are also major customers of Kobe Steel,although it is unclear at this stage whether these are directly affected by this latest malpractice.
If the investigation leads to an industry wide recall, the costs would be huge, Kobe Steel has admitted.
See also: Nissan recalls 1.2m vehicles sold in Japan for second inspection
After Nissan, other Japanese OEMs check inspection systems
