Follow-up Inspection

Several measures have been designed to monitor the continuing compliance of the factory that received the authorization to affix the JIS mark with the relevant legal criteria. The bottomline is that the competent Minister always maintains the right to order re-inspection when he deems such necessary.
The maximum penalty for illegal marking, such as the affixing of a JIS mark on a product without previous authorization, is one year of penal servitude or a fine of ¥1,000,000.

Systematic monitoring measures are:
1. reports of the "monitoring system"
2. purchase product testing
3. follow-up inspection

(1) Monitoring System

The monitoring system was originally designed to supervise consumer living standards and to contribute to their improvement. This system oversees the quality and marking aspects of consumer goods that inter alia are JIS mark products.
About 7,000 housewives are appointed as "monitors" that report to METI any non-conformity of a JIS mark product with the underlying JIS. The Minister can take any action necessary going up to and until withdrawal of the initial authorization to affix the JIS mark after a re-inspection of the production plant concerned.

(2) Purchase product testing

By means of spot checks on certain commercially available JIS mark products, "purchase product testing" adds to the compliance monitoring techniques next to the above mentioned "monitoring system"

(3) Follow-up Inspection

Several circumstances can justify surveillance of JIS mark certified factories, initiated either in the form of a public announcement of inspection (for Japanese enterprises) or of a notification of inspection (for foreign enterprises). In the first situation the inspection is announced in the Official Gazette, in the second one, by means of a letter to the foreign factories concerned.

The circumstances that justify such action are:
1) revision of relevant JIS (approximately every five years)
2) doubts about the functioning of the factory quality control system
3) other technical conditions that determine the quality of production.

The follow-up inspection will be performed by a Designated Inspection Body.

The Designated Inspection Bodies perform an on-site inspection and report their findings to the competent Minister. The competent Minister assesses the findings and then decides to re-confirm the status of the factories concerned or to withdraw the authorization to affix JIS-mark.

Figure. Follow-up Inspection

Description for Figure