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By Bloomberg

Honda Motor Co. President Takanobu Ito, beset by record recalls last year, told the automaker’s suppliers to examine their operations in order to improve quality and safety standards, the president of a vendor said.

Ito reviewed the automaker’s quality issues in the past year in his address to suppliers and named air-bag maker Takata Corp. in his speech, according to ZF Japan Co. President Richard Kracklauer, who was present at the gathering today.

“Honda said it wants to look deeper into its own systems, the production, development and purchasing, and they are expecting from us to do the same,” Kracklauer said in an interview after the meeting at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo. “This means we will also have to look deeper into our suppliers and sub-suppliers to secure the whole supply chain.”

Ito’s remarks come after Honda agreed to pay a record $70 million in fines and submit to stricter oversight for failing to tell the U.S. government about warranty claims and more than 1,700 injuries and deaths linked to potential defects in its cars. Ito led the carmaker through a calamitous 2014 that saw deaths in Honda cars linked to Takata’s air bags and record recalls to fix separate flaws in some of its most crucial models.

Akemi Ando, a spokeswoman for Honda, declined to confirm Ito’s remarks, saying the meeting wasn’t open to media.

Takata Chairman Shigehisa Takada, who was escorted into the hotel ballroom by Honda staff, said after the gathering that the company is making every effort to find the root cause of defects that caused air bags to deploy abnormally, spewing metal shards at passengers.

“Safety is the first priority and all we should be focusing on,” he said in the first comments to foreign media since the crisis erupted. Takada said in an interview with the Nikkei last month that the Tokyo-based parts supplier is adding capacity to make replacement components.