Takata Corp. said on Tuesday the company received the findings of an independent review by its Quality Assurance Panel chaired by former Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner.

Takata plans to act on all of the panel’s 15 recommendations to improve the design and manufacturing procedures of its airbags used in millions of vehicles. The report outlines specific recommendations for Takata in four distinct areas, as listed below:

— Addressing quality concerns

— Ensuring quality in Takata’s design and manufacturing process

— Promoting quality through improved management practices

— Creating processes to ensure implementation of the recommendations

Takata indicated it will provide a report to the panel one year from now summarizing the company’s progress in implementing the panel’s recommendations.

The 49-page report released on Monday and available at www.takatapanel.com highlighted a long series of process improvements, including:

— Refine the approach to monitoring in-fleet product performance.

— Ensure quality and safety concerns can stop product development.

— Ensure that data from quality performance testing is recorded and reported accurately.

— Develop a Takata standard for product safety specifications.

— Adopt a standard practice for seeking and utilizing third-party review.

— Increase and standardize automation operations across facilities.

— Reduce the incidence of conditional approvals in the design review process.

— Involve manufacturing earlier in the product design process.

— Ensure the design review process is outcome driven.

— Establish lifetime ownership over Takata product programs.

— Increase consistency in monitoring and documenting critical specifications and processes.

— Cultivate a quality culture at Takata.

— Increase leadership support for and involvement in quality initiatives.

— Link quality performance and compensation at the individual level.

— Guarantee sufficient resources are available in quality critical areas.

“We greatly appreciate the important work done by Secretary Skinner and the other distinguished members of the panel,” Takata chairman and chief executive officer Shigehisa Takada said. “As the report notes, Takata has longstanding quality strengths and continues to take steps to further improve quality, design and manufacturing procedures and practices.

“The Quality Assurance Panel’s report provides an additional set of clear, actionable steps to ensure that we support a best-in-class quality program,” Takada said. “We have thoroughly reviewed the panel’s recommendations, and we intend to act on them.

“Takata’s products play a critical role in protecting the driving public, and we understand that the quality of our operations needs to be beyond question,” Takada went on to say. “We are committed to earning back the trust of automakers and the driving public. We will do everything we can to achieve this.”

The company also mentioned the publication of the report fulfills Takata’s promise made a year ago to convene an independent panel of experts to review its current quality practices and to make the panel’s findings public.

As noted in the panel’s report, “Since its inception, the panel has had Takata’s full cooperation and support. Takata has answered every panel request, and has — in the panel’s view — strived for transparency. Several of the quality gaps discovered were identified by Takata and are currently being addressed.”

Along with Skinner, Takata Quality Assurance Panel members include:

• Marion Blakey, president and CEO of Rolls-Royce North America

• Nelda Connors, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Pine Grove Holdings, which invests in and operates small, mid-cap industrial companies

• John Landgraf, former executive vice president at Abbott, a global pharmaceutical company

• Julio Ottino, dean of the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University

• Dr. Jeffrey Runge, served as administrator of NHTSA from 2001 to 2005 and assistant secretary for health affairs and chief medical officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

• John Snow, chairman of Cerberus Capital Management who served as Treasury Secretary from 2003 to 2006

Recent actions Takata has taken to enhance quality, in addition to the creation of the panel, include the following:

— Adding more than 100 additional staff in key positions at the plant and regional levels of the Takata North American quality organization.

—Making capital investments of more than $160 million in its Inflator Group and North American Safety organization, including implementing state of the art automation in its manufacturing processes and additional equipment.

—Strengthening Takata’s culture around quality issues by forming and implementing a dedicated Product Safety Group and Takata Quality Drive Initiative, and committing to further build on its associate-driven Quality Circles program.

—Retaining an independent monitor as part of the consent agreement with NHTSA announced on Nov. 3.

—Strengthening the company’s compliance processes, including an improved whistle blower hotline program.

—Implementing a data vault for critical inflator testing at U.S. facilities to ensure that all testing results and testing reports are reliable and accurate, and expanding the vault approach into new testing areas.

In addition, Takata emphasized that it continues to address the current airbag inflator issue by reaching out to affected vehicle owners, extensive product testing, replacement kit production and phasing out of certain inflators.

Officials said approximately 750,000 visitors have gone to the airbagrecall.com website, which provides information on the recalls, and more than 155,000 outbound clicks have gone to Safercar.gov or automaker VIN lookup websites.

Three other response initiatives included:

— Phase out of Non-Desiccated PSAN Inflators: Takata has agreed to implement a series of actions in connection with the NHTSA consent order in November, including phasing out of the manufacture and sale of non-desiccated Phase Stabilized Ammonium Nitrate (PSAN) Takata inflators by the end of 2018. Takata has taken swift action to comply with the phase out of these inflators and is well ahead of schedule. Currently, less than 2 percent of driver inflators manufactured for U.S. vehicles contain non-desiccated PSAN.

— Replacement Kit Production: Takata continues to take steps to increase the production of airbag replacement kits in support of automotive recalls and safety campaigns. To date, the company has produced over 12 million kits. Currently more than 66 percent of replacements kits include non-ammonium nitrate inflators manufactured by other suppliers. Takata has increased production capacity to 1.5 million replacement kits per month, up from 350,000 per month in December 2014.

— Airbag Inflator Testing: To date, Takata has tested more than 180,000 returned inflators. This extensive testing work, and the research by the Fraunhofer Institute, one of the world’s leading applied research organizations, continues to show that exposure over a period of many years to a climate of persistent heat and high absolute humidity are the primary factors in the small number of inflators that have malfunctioned.