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## Pursuit of Operational Excellence 

We are working to optimize the allocation of management resources to achieve sustainable growth. At the same time, we are building an organizational structure and systems that will enable us to respond resiliently to the rapidly changing business environment, while working to enhance operational excellence even further. 

## Building an Optimal Production Framework 

To maintain a reliable and efficient supply of high- quality medicines, we continue to make progress in optimizing our production framework, including succes- sion of business in one of our production subsidiary plants in Japan. 

## Improving Our Global Medical and Development Functions 

The post of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) was created in April 2013 to help reinforce Astellas’ medical and devel- opment functions globally. Furthermore, aimed to inte- grate oversight of the product compliance functions with global development, several functions were unified under the CMO including pharmacovigilance, medical affairs, regulatory affairs and quality assurance. 

## Solutions pursued for Operational Excellence 

## Boosting Operational Efficiency through Use of External Resources 

As part of efforts to boost operational efficiency by using specialized external resources, we have outsourced some administrative functions shared by the group in Japan to an external specialist company. This will enable us to optimize the allocation of resources to functions that can demonstrate our competitive advantages. 

## Streamlining Assets and Consolidating Domestic Business Locations 

To increase our business process efficiency, we relocated and consolidated functions such as clinical development and QA in Japan to an office near the Tokyo Headquarters. In addition to divesting properties owned by the parent company and some Group companies in Japan, as part of the reshaping of our research framework, we also signed an agreement to transfer assets relating to fermentation research to another company in conjunction with our withdrawal from fermentation drug discovery research. 

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