�����˿�����

Sustainability is our guiding principle, supporting us in our day-to-day work and ensuring our long-term growth. Both integrity and sustainability are closely linked to our four company values: caring, agile, respectful, and accountable. Through sustainable development we make our contribution to a more equitable global economy and provide energy-efficient, durable products and solutions for our customers. In this way, we aim to live and breathe our socially responsible company culture – for the good of society.

Our company works with some 30,000 suppliers in about 135 countries. In 2023, the company purchased approximately €23.5 billion worth of goods and services. That figure accounts for almost two thirds of our total revenue. With such a large and geographically dispersed supplier network, �����˿����� cannot maintain the same level of oversight for every supplier. For example, it would be impossible to perform site audits everywhere. Instead we have established risk analysis procedures for each of our defined risk groups to systematically identify potential hazards in our supply chain. By using these risk identification processes, we identify the specific suppliers which we want to detect by one of our detection modules.

If our sustainability self-assessments or audits reveal infringements of our requirements, they must be remedied by the suppliers in question within a reasonable period of time. Besides follow-up audits carried out by our external audit partners, the responsible procurement units and the suppliers involved directly agree on the corrective actions defined during our audits. We reserve the right to end the supplier relationship in the event of serious infringements.

We firmly believe that our sustainability principles are at their most effective when they are applied voluntarily on the basis of personal conviction. The key elements here are broadening our suppliers’ capability and intensifying the transfer of knowledge about sustainability. We support our suppliers through our “Code of Conduct” brochure, and we explicitly encourage them to extend these values and sustainability requirements further into their own supply chain in order to create a network of interactions and business relations that are built on trust.