Green Products
Basic Stance
Contributing to the sustainable development of society and conducting environmentally friendly business operations are essential issues that need to be addressed in modern business management. The Advantest Group works to develop products from the perspective of environmental conservation while prioritizing high precision and high quality, and certifies as green products those products that are environmentally friendly in terms of the three key aspects of energy and resource saving, improving recyclability, and elimination of hazardous substances. There is demand in society for the supply of green products because they provide both a reduction in the environmental footprint and an improvement in economic value. The Advantest Group is developing green products in response to these demands and based on the belief that these products will be beneficial for its customers.
Approach to Sustainability Target for Products and Services
| Supervising division | Design Operation Department/ Business Promotion Division |
|---|---|
| KPI | Percentage of products meeting the company's voluntary green products standards |
| FY2020 target | 100% |
| Results achieved in fiscal 2019 | 100% |
| Material reasons | Advantest products generate various small and large environmental impacts through their use. Green products, which reduce environmental impact, are important to us not only because they address environmental issues but also because it helps us to show the quality of our products. |
| Boundary | FY2019: Domestic Advantest (Japan) only, FY2020: Entire Advantest Group |
| Relevant policies | Advantest Group Environmental Policy |
| Relevant commitments | Voluntary standards for green products that conform to the ISO14021 |
| Responsible department/division | Environmental Management Officer |
| Management resources | |
| Relevant complaint processing policy | |
| Assessment | ✓ |
Development Flow of Green Products
At the Advantest Group, all products undergo a product environmental assessment.
During the product environmental assessment, products are assessed from various aspects, including energy-saving, reduction of the number of components, size reduction, recyclable design, and elimination of hazardous substances.
New products that meet the Voluntary Standards for Green Products defined by Advantest are certified as green products and are awarded with an Eco Label (type II), in addition to the product environmental assessment. We design new products to be 100% green products.
Development flow of green products
Advantest Group Eco Label
The Advantest Group Eco Label features an original three-color design representing energy and resource saving, recyclable design, and elimination of hazardous substances through green procurement.
Energy and Resource Saving
Voluntary Standards
- Energy saving design
- Reducing component design
- Size reduction design
Recyclable Design
Voluntary Standards
- Design with recyclable plastic materials
- Design for ease of dismantling
- Release of information on disposal
Elimination of hazardous substances
(Green Procurement)
Voluntary Standards
- Improved rates of green procurement
- Elimination of banned substances
Energy and Resource Saving
We aim to reduce the environmental impact of our products through product designs that save energy, reduce components, and reduce size.
The reduction rate of energy against conventional products has been set to a standard of at least 20% for semiconductor test systems and measurement instruments, and at least 10% for other products such as handlers and nanotech products.
We have also set a reduction rate of at least 10% in the same way for components and the miniaturization for all of our products.
Recyclable Design
In recyclable design, we release information on parts that will require special attention during disposal, and plastic parts designed in-house use 90% or more recyclable materials. Moreover, we make sure that products are easy to dismantle with standard tools, and we use rechargeable batteries displaying a recycle symbol.
Elimination of Hazardous Substances (Green Procurement)
To eliminate hazardous substances from our products, we have established Group standards on banned substances based on the IEC 62474 standard, and we conduct surveys of hazardous substances contained in parts and materials used in our products. Advantest is building a response system for some of its products and eliminating relevant chemical substances using the results of this survey because these chemical substances are regulated by the RoHS directive as of July 2017.
In addition, there have been no emissions of gases such as PFCs due to our products because these products are test instruments for semiconductors and not manufacturing products.
Green Products Certified During Fiscal 2019
We supplied the following products, which were certified as green products in fiscal 2019.
- Burn-in Tester B6700DES
- Burn-in Tester H5620
- Temperature and Pressure Unit HA7201
- E-Beam Lithography F7500
- Hadatomo WEL5200
| New product model | Versus previous product | Energy efficiency improvement (%) | Reduction in components rate (%) | Reduction in size rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B6700DES | B6700ES | 50 | 50 | 50 |
| H5620 | H5900 | 60 | 46 | 63 |
| F7500 | F7000S | 80 | 80 | 84 |
| WEL5200 | WEL5100 | 68 | 92 | 85 |
Note: The reduction rates given above are the values resulting from the performance conversion.