Procurement Policy
Basic Procurement Policy
- Sincere, open, honest, and fair trade
We procure optimal components globally, honoring the principle of free competition. - Prosperous partnerships with our suppliers
We aim to build relationships that prosper both us and our suppliers, reflecting our commitment to mutual understanding and trust. - Legal compliance and environmental protection
Our procurement initiatives comply with national and regional laws and conserve and protect the environment. - Quality, economic rationality, stable supply
We fully evaluate each supplier for suitable quality, reliability, delivery, price, capacity to develop technology and actively propose solutions, and management stability, among other considerations, and our procurement practices are based on reasonable standards.
Green Procurement
The Sodick Group conducts eco-friendly product development, design, manufacturing, sales, and service around the world in the hope of doing good for the community. Our Green Procurement Standard helps ensure that the manufacturing of our products is benign to the environment. Following this standard, we procure eco-friendly materials, components, packaging, and products.
- Environmentally controlled substances
Laws and regulations on the chemical content of products have been expanding and growing tougher around the world in recent years. Examples include the RoHS Directive and REACH Regulation in Europe and the China RoHS. The Sodick Group is stepping up our own chemical content management program to ensure we stay in compliance with such laws and regulations.
Environmentally controlled substances are defined as chemical substances used during product manufacturing and substances contained in products and which are deemed to have a markedly harmful effect on the global environment and people. The Sodick Group manages environmentally controlled substances by categorizing them into three classes, as below.
- Prohibited substances: Chemical substances that the law, in effect, prohibits us from handling (e.g., manufacturing, using, or importing).
- Substances to be reduced: Chemical substances that will be reduced in future based on regulatory trends and other related issues.
- Managed substances: Chemical substances that need to be tracked by how much is contained in products, in order to protect the environment.
We furthermore ask our suppliers to understand the Environmental Policy of the Sodick Group and cooperate with our surveys of environmentally controlled substances. - Conflict minerals
Conflict minerals are minerals such as tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold that finance armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and adjoining countries. The U.S. established the Dodd-Frank Act in July 2010. Section 1502 of the law is designed to cut off this source of funding. The provisions of Section 1502 require businesses listed on American stock exchanges to report their use of conflict minerals, if any, to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Since the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act, moreover, countries other than the U.S. have begun addressing the conflict minerals problem.
The Sodick Group believes it is our corporate social responsibility to help solve the conflict minerals problem and as such, it is our policy not to use conflict minerals. We ask our suppliers to cooperate in our surveys of conflict minerals to ensure that our supply chain does not finance armed groups.
BCP Surveys
At Sodick Group we have established a business continuity plan (BCP) to lower the risk of a supply chain disruption in the event of natural disaster, accident, terrorism, or other emergency and to ensure continuity or rapid recovery of our core business. Along with setting our BCP, we survey our suppliers to find out the state of their own BCPs so we can assess the risk to the overall supply chain. We diagnose, maintain, and update our BCP based on the survey results.
The Sodick Group also believes every business on the supply chain has a social responsibility to institute a BCP. Thus, we ask suppliers to make improvements appropriate to their situation if we determine their BCP efforts are insufficient.
Because our global procurement connects us to a wider range of suppliers, there are all types of risks imaginable in the supply chain. We respond by communicating the importance of BCPs to our suppliers in Japan and beyond and seek out their ongoing cooperation with our surveys.