Recalling 15,278 cranes after a fatal accident, and writing a CSR Charter (2004)

The interval between knowing and filing

What the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport objected to was not that a defect existed but that the company knew of it, let it pass, and was late to act. Faults occur at every manufacturer. The company that in 1972 built Japan’s first overload prevention device, and had sold ever since the idea that dangerous operation should be stopped by the machine itself, deferred filing while aware that its own device was misfiring — and that gap weighed more, one suspects, than the figure of 15,278. The person killed was neither the buyer of the machine nor its operator, but a thirty-three-year-old woman driving on a national road.

The cost came to about $1.4M (¥150m) and the results barely moved. The consequences that lasted did not appear in the numbers. Tadano adopted a CSR Charter, added compliance to its core values, and placed the episode among the three events it tells and retells internally. But the same three include four fatal workplace accidents. Building an institution and keeping people from dying on the job are separate matters, and the second does not conclude on the day the charter is signed. The more a company sells safety as product value, the more it has to keep measuring that distance.