Supply chain

Section Four Promoting Social Responibility with our Suppliers

Our Challenges

Extending supply chain social responsibility across a global supply chain

Improving our suppliers’ ability to meet social responsibility requirements in our sourcing strategies

Our Opportunities

Assisting suppliers in emerging markets to develop into world-class providers

Raising the management systems capability of suppliers and sharing best practices

Contributing to the sustainable economic development of emerging markets

Our Strategy

Identifying patterns of compliance and noncompliance through audits conducted in supplier locations globally

Facilitating learning and capacity building programs

Chairing the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition to promote collaboration within the industry

Including Supplier Code of Conduct in pre-sourcing activities

In this section download

This section features limited excerpts from the printed version of the report. For the complete report with Key Performance Indicators – or the full contents of this section – see the downloads to the right.

Introduction
For an enterprise like IBM to consistently provide innovative products and services on a global basis, it must maintain a strong supply chain — especially today, with markets so diverse and dispersed. We currently have about 30,000 supplier locations spread out over more than 60 countries.

At IBM, we understand that our supply chain is only as good as the relationship we have with our suppliers. We believe in the value of establishing long-term supplier relationships which facilitate sustained growth and opportunities for both IBM and our suppliers. To help define the parameters of the relationship, we have developed a comprehensive Supply Chain Social Responsibility initiative that underscores our belief that values define business relationships just as much as economic necessities do.

The Supply Chain section covers the following supply chain responsibility initiatives:

What We Expect of our Suppliers
Continuous Improvement
Industry Collaboration: Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition
Supply Chain Diversity

Wei Dong Zhou, Business for Social Responsibility, China Director

“Over the past decade, companies in many sectors have begun to address issues within their supply chains both individually and collectively. Initial efforts have resulted in some level of improved factory labor and environmental conditions through auditing procedures and subsequent remediation plans to improve compliance. However, it is time for companies to move to the next step of factory engagement in order to effect change.

Despite a decade of good intent and dedicated resource commitment, programs based on the traditional audit model have not brought sustained workplace improvement in the global supply chain. Leadership companies like IBM have begun to focus on improved capacity building and collaboration as a means of furthering on-the-ground change.

The technology sector has been one of the first to proactively address supplier issues in a consistent way through the efforts of the EICC. Looking ahead, the industry will also need to consider:

Stronger consistency and shared processes to reduce duplicate efforts with suppliers.
Improved commercial model between buyers and suppliers focusing less on buyer mandates in order to incorporate supplier’s needs in a more sustained manner.
Stronger engagement with local government, industry and NGOs to help address systemic issues, such as excessive working hours and full payment of wages and social benefits.”