Published
28 April 2008, 10:12 AM
Civil society increasingly demands transparency and consumers would like to have details about how their products are manufactured and by whom. It is not enough anymore to know that a laptop is an HP laptop for example. We acknowledged this demand and were the first IT company to publish a list of our largest suppliers at the beginning of this month.
The list consists of our largest suppliers which represent over 95% of our global procurement expenditures for materials, manufacturing and assembly of our products. We operate the industry’s largest supply chain and therefore we want to lead by example and foster transparency. Hopefully this step will encourage other companies in our industry to follow.
We continuously aim to raise supply chain standards in our industry, specifically when it comes to health & safety for employees and environmental conditions. Another recent example is the final report of a joint project with the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency which provides guidance to small and medium-sized enterprise suppliers on how to leverage from existing management tools and training opportunities to become a more responsible company within a global supply chain.
Since the publication of our supplier list we have received various feedback. In his blog on Business Green, Danny Bradbury critically reviews our supplier list and refers to still existing issues along the supply chain. At the same time he acknowledges positively that we belong to one of the first companies which makes its direct suppliers publicly available.
I consider transparency to be the best way to bring more clarity and maybe also control into the supply chain considering that multinational corporations have an immense network of suppliers worldwide (Walmart has over 60,000 suppliers for example). To my knowledge only very few companies have already published the names of their suppliers like Nike . Are you aware of any further transparency initiatives in other industries? Let me know by posting a comment.
Jeannette Weisschuh, Head of Corporate Affairs, HP EMEA
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