In his new year message, Yamana said the 2021 business environment had been “fraught” due to the ongoing issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
After Covid, his second topic was the events at its Tatsuno factory last summer – a fire followed five weeks later by an explosion – that resulted in toner production being shut down at Tatsuno and also at its separate Kofu toner plant as a precaution.
Yamana said: “With regard to the accidents that occurred at Tatsuno Factory in the group last year, I would like to offer my sincere apologies to residents in the neighbouring communities, the relevant authorities and our customers for the enormous inconvenience and concerns they caused.
“We take the accidents seriously, and are even more determined to ensure the safety of the community and take appropriate steps to prevent the recurrence, while building customers’ confidence in our products,” he stated.
Tatsuno, which makes the Simitri polymerised toner used in its high-end devices, restarted production on 8 November. Kofu resumed production on 18 October.
KM customers in the UK told Printweek that toner supplies were now “trickling through” but product was not yet in full supply.
In his update Yamana said KM was focusing on two areas as part of its plans looking ahead to 2025.
The group aims to leverage the global customer base of its Office business to transform into “the Digital Workplace business”.
“To meet the needs of customers in diverse industries, including printing, healthcare, education and manufacturing, we will continue to offer optimal solutions to customers for reforming workstyles and improving service quality, taking advantage of our state-of-the-art digital technologies,” he said.
The second part of the transformation is focused on growth in the areas of measurement, inspection and diagnosis by leveraging KM’s imaging technology for applications such as detecting diseases before they develop.
Yamana said that human capital was “the true source of our ability to implement initiatives toward this transformation and create new value” at the ¥863bn (£5.5bn) turnover business.
He pledged: “At the Konica Minolta Group, each of our more than 40,000 members will tackle social problems as their own, aiming to realise the corporate vision of 'Imaging to the People' and expand co-creation efforts with customers and business partners.”
Separately, KM has flagged “multiple vulnerabilities” to possible cyber attack affecting some of its multifunction printers and single-function printers – specifically various models in its BizHub range.
The issues were detected by researchers at the Institute for innovative Safety and Security at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany.
The vulnerabilities can be fixed by using encryption settings and updating the firmware.
Full details of the models involved and required mitigations can be found here.
