If an issue is discovered with a supplier, suppliers would be required to address them within a short time frame (1-3 months, depending on the severity of the issue) and invest in measures that prevent these issues from re-occurring.
The report also includes detailed annexes on local and international procurement, listing suppliers, supplier countries and where supplies are used.
Manufacturers can talk directly to their customers, or to their suppliers' suppliers.
So supermarkets demanded it from their suppliers, suppliers demanded it from farmers and farmers demanded it from Monsanto.
By last year, Apple had inspected 396 facilities — including the company's direct suppliers, as well as many of those suppliers' suppliers — one of the largest such programs within the electronics industry.
As with financial regulators' discovery of how poorly they understood the "shadow banking" system and arcane derivatives contracts, manufacturers are discovering how little they know about their suppliers' suppliers and those even farther down the chain.
It plans to post constant updates of its production schedules on a secure part of the site available not only to its primary suppliers but to its suppliers' suppliers, and on down the line, said Harold R. Kutner, group vice president for global purchasing.
The taxonomy identifies four categories of small innovative firms: science-based, specialised suppliers, supplier-dominated and resource-intensive.
But even more may be saved by improved communications between GM and its suppliers, and between GM and its suppliers' suppliers.
Buyers pay a subscription fee based on the number of users and the number of suppliers; suppliers pay a nominal fee to have their catalog Web-enabled.
