Printing

At Abeism, our fundamental policy is, “we do not produce defective products nor will we market them.” Our goal is the highest standards of printing quality in the world, so we integrate quality into all our work and are certified for ISO 9001. The printing quality at Abeism is based on manuals. A defect in the printing of these manuals is handled the same as other hardware parts of products. Any defect that comes to light after a product is released would be a serious problem. This quality standard is incomparably higher than those for general publication printing and commercial printing. Another of our strengths is our extremely precise color printing, which we developed for printing of artwork.

We have equipped our Chiba Plants with the latest equipment. All our sheet-fed presses were manufactured by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG; we have 12 printing presses, including a 10-color dual-sided press, plus 16 folding machines and the latest saddle stitch machines. The fundamental idea behind our improved productivity is to use the newest equipment to promote higher speeds and automation and to raise the abilities of our staff to operate this equipment. We are constantly innovating to increase productivity, by standardizing operations, naturally, and also by promoting cross training of operators to handle a variety of machines.

At our Chiba Plants, we have centralized our platemaking, printing, bookbinding, kitting, and distribution operations under one roof. Essentially, it is a printing plant + bookbinding plant + warehouse + delivery center. This allows us to lower the cost of transportation between processes and to reduce the time to move products. We kit printed goods with attachments, control inventory and shipping of printed products, as well as providing commissioned delivery services to ship products to multiple destinations.

Proactive global environmental protection initiatives are a fundamental part of management at Abeism. We were certified for ISO 14001 early on, and continue to promote environmental protection from a comprehensive standpoint that goes beyond the processing of the waste and chemicals related to printing. At Abeism, we are also taking a long-term view on handling the problems associated with paper consumption. We believe using paper made from wood from renewable forests is very important, and to protect forests we have acquired FSC^®/CoC certification.

In 2002, we established Abeism Vietnam, our fully owned company which is the first 100% foreign-based printing company in Vietnam. And we built our own printing and bookbinding plant in Hanoi. We have built an organization with full technical direction from Japan to maintain the same high quality as we maintain domestically. Abeism Vietnam is ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified, so we can support delivery of goods in Asia to support Japanese manufacturers shifting production to Asia.