Material Issue 8

Related SDGs

Basic Policy

In the fields of forestry and wooden construction business, where tradition and experience have been valued, it is necessary to raise economic efficiency and increase added value through market reforms such as DX and innovation, in view of the decrease and aging of main players, the advancement and globalization of technologies, and future demand expansion. Amid the global acceleration of digitalization in the procurement, design and construction stages of buildings, utilization of technologies including AI technology, and digitalization of end consumers, delayed responses can result in cost disadvantages compared to competitors and can lead to the loss of customer contacts and opportunities to win new customers.

The Sumitomo Forestry Group aims to ensure the quality and quantity of wood resources and provide them with high added value by improving the efficiency of sales activities and supply chains through DX and innovation. In the field of elderly care business, which faces similar challenges, we will introduce innovations to increase added value, such as user safety and security and improve operational efficiency

Impact on Society and the Environment

Management of Material Issue 8 (FY2025)

In the Mid-term Sustainability Targets Phase 2 (2025 to 2027), Material Issue 8 is roughly divided into the following categories and managed through the annual action policies and measures adopted by the department in charge.

DX related

The Sumitomo Forestry Group is proactively introducing robotic process automation (RPA) to automate and increase the efficiency of its operations. The number of RPA citizen developers reached 296 in fiscal 2025, exceeding the target of 260, which proves that we are favorably making progress for RPA. We will enhance the citizen developer support system to help the employees who received training to be citizen developers continue their development activities. In order to foster DX at the initiative of on-site workers, we will increase the number of citizen developers to 500 by fiscal 2027.

For the digitalization of forest management, we are proactively developing a forest management information system using latest digital technologies for the sustainable use and efficient management of forest resources. In fiscal 2025, we completed the release of some functions for the system and also started to develop an inventory/forestry management system. In fiscal 2027 we will standardize these systems to further advance and increase the efficiency of our forest management.

In the elderly nursing care business, we are working on the introduction of sensor devices to our nursing care facilities, with a view to improving the quality of nursing services provided at the facilities and also increasing on-site operational efficiency. We have completed the introduction of the devices to a total of 21 homes, including 17 facilities of Sumirin Fill Care and four facilities of Sumirin Care Life, thereby ensuring the safety of residents and also reducing the burdens imposed on the caregiving staff.

Also, for the restructuring and higher efficiency of the timber and building materials industry, we are working to popularize our JUCORE Mitsumori* service. The number of IDs issued under the JUCORE Mitsumori service agreements concluded with customers was 205 and was below the target of 1,070. Although the service was highly rated for its usefulness for the creation and management of estimates as well as for the division of labor, the operability and analysis functions have not yet met the expectations of customers, resulting in a stagnant increase in the number of customers who agree to introduce the service on a trial basis. We will set short-, medium- and long-term targets for this service to achieve the target of 3,674 in fiscal 2027.

*JUCORE is a digital platform provided by Sumitomo Forestry for the housing and building materials industry. It is a cloud service that supports the creation of estimates and the improvement of operational efficiency.

With regard to the enhancement of the efficiency of collecting non-financial information and the precision of collected data, we need to build a data infrastructure that supports sustainability management toward the enhancement of our corporate value on a medium- to long-term basis. Specifically, we need to manage sustainability data on a consolidated basis, expand information disclosure, and make data-based management decisions for data-driven management. To this end, we are required to solve issues related to data collection and build a system to collect accurate information in a timely and efficient manner on a consolidated basis across the Group. In 2025, we conducted surveys on the social information collection processes followed at Sumitomo Forestry’s head office as well as at its domestic and overseas subsidiaries. Through the surveys we checked the flow and internal control of a series of operations from data generation at each of the subsidiaries through to the collection and tabulation of the generated data by the department in charge at the head office. We then clarified the issues and challenges and set the policies to address them. Going forward, we will conduct examinations to solve the identified issues, including considering building a necessary system for the solution.

*Initiative for building a platform to restructure the wood and building materials Industry / Quotation support system