Changing Business from the Inside Out

7Supplier responsibility:Part 2The four essential program elements

This chapter sets out four elements for implementing your supplier responsibility program and provides tips to balance compliance activities with other techniques for maximum effectiveness.

Trust, but verify (Ronald Reagan).

In setting up the Apple supplier responsibility program, I spent hours on benchmarking and research to understand how other companies (most in the footwear and apparel industries, which have years of experience in dealing with these issues) had structured their supplier responsibility programs. The goal of this research was not to copy what others had done, but to assess what had worked and what had not. Based on the results of this study, I established the ...