Akihiro Ota,   Executive Director, Sanwa Solution Staff Co., Ltd., Sanwa Group The Sanwa Group has participated in the Fielding eco Net Service since it started in April 2007. The greatest feature of the eco Net Service is that it clearly states the steps to ISO 14001 certification. All we had to do was perform the actions according to the menu provided to us. We were able to develop an environmental management system suited to the situation of the group, both quickly and cheaply. When the group acquired the international ISO/IEC 27001 information-security standard certification in 2006, we had a big trouble in creating manuals and the like. This time, eco Net Service was a great help to us. The ability to conduct environmental education and ISO registration screening via the Internet is also convenient. Our environmental initiative, however, has just begun. We began implementing five activities in fiscal 2007. Moving forward, we will continue these activities, increasing the effectiveness of our reductions to environmental impact and encouraging our group employees to take action in their homes as well. Advancing environmental management together with corporate partners and affiliates As we work to achieve a recycling-oriented economy, the role of corporations in protecting the environment has grown increasingly important over the past few years. At NEC Fielding, we have identified response to the environment as one of our key challenges, and we run our operations accordingly. As part of these efforts, we are working to obtain ISO 14001 as quickly as possible, and advance such initiatives as green procurement, where products are purchased preferentially from companies with active commitments to environmental conservation. In April 2007, we also began offering the Fielding eco Net Service to help our suppliers build and operate environmental management systems (EMS), in order to increase the quality of our environmental management together with our corporate partners and affiliates. Support for improving the quality of environmental management Fielding eco Net Service provides support for quickly building a high-quality EMS by providing standard content over the Internet suited to each of our suppliers' industries, using our NetEMS system for joint EMS operation. Expert staff from NEC Fielding visit companies that have decided to introduce the service, providing support via the PDCA cycle for a wide range of processes during system development. We also conduct an environmental management assessment once per year to check the system's functionality. The results of the assessment are written up in an assessment report. Each of our suppliers is thus able rapidly to achieve reliable environmental management by utilizing this support scheme. We are committed to building a win-win relationship by tying the growth of our partners and suppliers through this service to the growth of NEC Fielding. We also provide services to support acquisition of ISO 14001 certification Fielding eco Net Service also provides support for obtaining ISO 14001 certification. We provided standard EMS content via the network, making it possible to greatly reduce the time required to obtain certification. The service also uses computer assisted auditing techniques to review those obtaining ISO 14001 certification. This reduces the labor and cost of screening, enabling the company to undergo review faster. One major feature of the service is that it can also provide environmental education and testing to employees via e-learning, providing everything from EMS development to operation, screening, and training. Through this service, five of our corporate partners obtained certification in fiscal 2007, and we expect 10 companies to have obtained certification by the end of fiscal 2008. We will enhance our environmental management regime throughout the entire group by actively offering this service to our suppliers.