TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Electric President and CEO Takeshi Sugiyama said he will resign after revelations that the company used a computer program to generate falsified data for equipment going back as far as the 1980s.

"Problems ... have occurred in recent years, and I am keenly aware of my responsibility for damaging trust," Sugiyama said in a news conference on Friday. "I have decided that I will resign as president and that a new system is necessary to work to restore trust."

The news conference followed two days of news about faked inspection data revealed by Mitsubishi Electric, first for air-conditioning equipment and then air compressors used in train brakes.

A survey of 160 employees at a factory in Nagasaki prefecture, where the improper inspections were carried out, revealed that senior managers in the quality control and design departments were aware of what was going on.

Sugiyama called the improper inspections "systematic wrongdoing."

The company has reviewed its quality control measures three times since the 2016 fiscal year. Inspections in 2018 and 2019 were conducted by an internal team, but did not uncover the falsifications.

Mitsubishi Electric said that this time it will set up an investigation committee chaired by an outside lawyer, which will cooperate with the audit committee to clarify the situation and create measures to prevent such issues from recurring.

The result of the investigation and measures for inappropriate inspections of air conditioners for railway rolling stock will be announced in September.

Sugiyama apologized for "not being able to find and correct" the issues.