President's Message
A year of continuous thinking about what we can do
The PLUS Group stresses the importance of “Four Way Satisfaction,” our management policy that aims to satisfy customers, corporate partners, employees, and society all at the same time. We have also been tackling the discovery and creation of satisfaction in all areas, from procurement of materials to manufacturing, sales, use, disposal, collection, and recycling. The most important things for us are to engage in the development of high-quality products and services that improve the life quality of our customers, and continue to persistently take on new challenges with our partners, and to provide our employees with a work environment that allows them to take on challenges in their work while maintaining proper physical and mental health, so that we can continue to be a company that resonates with society. The only way to achieve sustainability in The PLUS Group is for us to put these management policies into practice.
In May of 2023, the shift of COVID-19 to a category V infectious disease led to a widespread easing of travel restrictions. This showed the promise of finally returning to a normal state of things. Meanwhile, the future still continues to be unclear due to factors such as international conflicts, rising resource prices, and the weakening of the yen. As value perspectives around the world change drastically and markets continue to change greatly, I feel that we must be able to respond flexibly.
To that end, The PLUS Group incorporated sustainability measures in our Medium-term Business Plan (FY2023 to FY2025), and decided to work together to solve various social problems through business activities across the entire Group companies. We recognize 14 specific materialities as crucial management issues and are taking specific actions together with our stakeholders. For example, we have prioritized solving social issues related to business activities. With regards to environmental issues, such as the particularly urgent issue of climate change, PLUS CORPORATION has finished calculating greenhouse gas emissions. Going forward, we will continue calculations at each Group company. We will also specify objectives regarding reduction of emissions and make efforts to realize them.
Steady steps toward sustainability
The PLUS Group deems it crucial to take on challenges in an era where it is impossible to foresee the future. In the fiscal year 2024, which is the second year of our Medium-term Business Plan, our propulsion forward, with sustainability as the core element, will accelerate activities from perspectives of business value as well as social value.
In the furniture business sector, factors such as the C02 absorption capability of timber, the suppression of C02 emissions from material manufacture to commercialization of products, the warmth of timber materials, and the relaxing effect of these materials have created an increased opportunity to proactively utilize domestic timber in office workspaces. One of our initiatives against climate change is our official start of MOKURAL in 2023, which is a project that aims to revitalize the health of forests and achieve carbon neutrality through proactive utilization of domestic timber. The first initiative was our release of the Vicenda Series, a timber-metal composite made from domestic fast-growing broad-leaved bead trees. We are also participating in the “Bead Tree Cycle” project, which aims for sustainable circulation of forests through the construction of a timber circulation system. In this project, we will fulfill our duties and focus on transmitting information to raise awareness of fastgrowing broad-leaved bead trees.
In stationery business sectors, we are aiming for the efficient utilization of finite resources by advancing development of environmentally-friendly products for the purpose of reducing the use of plastics and CO2 emissions. We launched “COE365” in 2022 as a brand to foster environmental considerations, with students who are main target users. We are promoting creating products with a focus on the recycling of resources while reducing raw materials and waste, and to reduce burdens on the environment as much as possible through efforts such as utilizing recycled paper.
In the logistics business sector, we are advancing digital transformation (DX) in logistics. Under the theme of “summarizing and visualizing Group logistics,” we will visualize and analyze in a lateral way all the logistics data of the Group from manufacturing to warehousing, shipping, and distribution, to respond to the needs of our customers and business partners and to reduce C02 emissions. In our delivery services for members, we started providing “Smart Delivery” in August of 2023, with the aims to improve customer convenience and reduce burdens on the environment and logistics. We have added a function that allows customers to specify their desired delivery date, which has reduced the workload for receiving deliveries and has reduced the number of deliveries made. This shows that we have started to see the effects of one of our solutions in “2024 Issues” in the logistics industry, such as the streamlining of logistics work and reduction of C02 emissions.
As there are more cases of large-scale natural disasters that affect regional societies, we are required to contribute to safe and secure societies through commodity collaboration in the event of an emergency. To that end, with the aim to deepen partnerships with regional societies, The PLUS Group is entering into various disaster prevention accords to proactively work with local regions to prepare for emergencies during ordinary times, with a focus on regions that serve as logistics bases. We will continue to contribute to regional disaster prevention and sustainable development through coordination and cooperation with everyone in local governments.
We are further accelerating our strive of uniqueness, which is a value of the Group. The “Next-Generation Core Business Creation Program,” which is part of “Minna no DX Project (under the direct control of the president involving all employees),” is focused on the issues of food in workplaces, and involves the development of fixedfee services that lead to improvements in workplace satisfaction and to the introduction of benefits services that are attractive to employees. We established TABERERU Corporation in September of 2023 and started operation in December. The company provides food products that are safe and healthy. Since these foods are frozen, thereby extending their shelf life, they can also contribute to solving the food loss problem. We will continue to provide products and services that realize comfortable, enjoyable, and smart work spaces.
Aiming to solve social problems through cooperation with our stakeholders
“Minna no DX Project”, which has been expanded inside the company to realize “Four Way Satisfaction” management, optimizes logistics and security, starting with the unification of primary business infrastructure such as systems, applications, and databases that differ by organization, and promotes initiatives that enable large-scale transformation to achieve smoother and more effective work processes and communication.
The PLUS Group is a group of financially independent companies, and each company has a history of constructing their optimal business structure. However, in the current age of VUCA where our future is unclear and uncertain in a business environment, I have a strong sense of urgency that companies unable to achieve flexible, prompt, and low-cost operations in response to drastically changing markets will not ultimately survive. Therefore, we will consolidate the business infrastructure of each organization and, by having a full-time shared department as a common base for all companies engage in collective management, development, and maintenance, we will think about the people, things, and money to be concentrated in areas for bringing out the individuality of each business, such as product development, sales, and marketing.
We have named the common system having this business infrastructure at its center as “PRS” (PLUS Resonant System) (tentative name), with the aim to have a system to create resonance (in line with the meaning of “resonant”). Moreover, this system will not only be used in The PLUS Group, but we will proactively open it up to partner companies such as suppliers and retailers and, in the future, to markets (society), with the aim to elevate business ecosystems. In particular, the concept is to provide an environment that enables, with stakeholders, co-use of functions and infrastructure necessary for general manufacturing and sales businesses, such as production sites, logistics warehouses, sales, e-commerce, and customer databases, and to ultimately make this system social infrastructure similarly to water, electricity, and gas. This approach and system design concept are also linked to the “Four Way Satisfaction” management policy, and we continue aiming to be a company that can satisfy the needs of our various stakeholders.
The PLUS Group will continue the “Four Way Satisfaction” management that satisfies the needs of all our stakeholders at the same time. To that end, we aim to continue growing together with all our stakeholders while being sensitive to changes in the times to change our own business and to create changes.