Compliance & Sourcing
Ensuring factory accountability
At Walmart, we believe transparency improves worker safety. Transparency is a good accountability tool and facilitates collaboration by providing everyone with a window into conditions at individual factories.
Bangladesh in-depth safety audits
As part of our commitment to transparency, we’re releasing the results of the Bureau Veritas in-depth fire and building safety assessments on our corporate website. To our knowledge, this is the first time a retailer has published the results of factory assessments on this scale.
The results through the end of 2013 show factories have made substantial improvements over the past year that are helping to ensure safer conditions for thousands of workers in Bangladesh. For example:
- The average electrical rating improvement of this group of factories is 48.27 percent
- The average building safety improvement of this group is 29.53 percent
U.S. agriculture and aquaculture
In the U.S., we’ve increased our focus on buying products from local suppliers and farmers. While this is a good thing for local farmers, communities and business owners, we recognize the initiative presents unique challenges to small suppliers who may not have the resources necessary to implement our responsible sourcing requirements.
To support these local suppliers, in 2012, we launched a program to better understand our U.S. agriculture and aquaculture supply chain. We’re looking deeper into our supplier facilities and processing centers, including farms and fresh-packing facilities. In 2013, we gained visibility into the more than 700 suppliers and 6,000 facilities in the U.S. agriculture and aquaculture supply chain for both Walmart and Sam’s Club.
We’ve also developed a comprehensive program, including education, training and capacity building, to enable suppliers and their facilities to better meet our expectations. As part of this program, in 2013, we hosted 20 live supplier summits and three webinars.
We continue to work with industry associations on the farmer education program. For example, we’re currently working with Oxfam to identify suppliers to pilot their Equitable Food Initiative. We’re also working with other brands and suppliers on a multistakeholder initiative commissioned by Walmart and being driven by Verité.
Informal supply chain
We’re committed to supporting the informal supply chain, which ranges from the small supplier to artisan home workers. These suppliers bring innovation of products and designs to our customers.
The nature of the informal supply chain makes it difficult to verify that workers are provided a safe environment and treated with dignity and respect. These products are often produced in microfacilities, homes or community centers where traditional audits are difficult for small suppliers to support.
Our team at George, Walmart’s private-label clothing line, has worked with 17,000 workers in 34 factories in Bangladesh to implement the LEAN Manufacturing program. The LEAN program is designed to streamline production processes and invest in worker skills training. Starting in 2014, George plans to roll out the LEAN program in factories in China, India and Sri Lanka. Additionally, over the next five years, George will train a minimum of 10,000 workers in LEAN principles through the George Supplier Academy program. You can find more information on the LEAN program and the George Supplier Academy in George’s Doing the Right Thing report here.
In order to better support our suppliers in the informal supply chain, we’re creating an enhanced framework for validating that our standards are being met. In 2013, we began a basic mapping process to understand the countries and industries where products are being produced for Walmart via the informal supply chain. We’re also identifying third-party organizations that can validate our standards are being met by small suppliers.