The production of goods and the provision of services in our supply chain should take place under comparable conditions to those prevailing in our own company. We require partners in a business relationship with RWE to accept the principles of our Code of Conduct as a basis for cooperation. This is implemented by incorporating the principles for behaviour included in the RWE Code of Conduct into the contractual relationships. Our principles for behaviour address issues including human rights, labour standards, the environment, anti-corruption, and money laundering. The procurement conditions are managed centrally by Group Procurement.
Group Procurement is assigned organisationally to RWE Power AG, reports to its Chief Financial Officer and provides procurement services to all RWE Group Companies. The basis for procurement activities is provided by our Group Directive Procurement. This defines uniform principles applicable throughout the Group for carrying out procurement.
The compliance rules and principles must be complied with for all procurement transactions alongside the RWE Code of Conduct. The supplier or service provider is obliged to adhere to these regulations. We review business relationships with business partners if it becomes known in the public domain that they have breached the principles of the UN Global Compact. We then take appropriate measures that we consider necessary and put them into action. For example, when deploying employees from subcontractors it is important to observe the aspects of labour law pertaining in the individual country of deployment. A risk assessment for specific product groups is used as a basis for the regulations to be observed by suppliers and they are explicitly agreed in separate contractual clauses.
Supplier management is a key building block within the strategic procurement process for Group-wide procurement. One of the objectives of supplier management is to safeguard and improve the supplier service and to identify and manage supplier risks. If there are any problems in relation to the business relationship, we involve our suppliers and work together with them to generate improvements. For example, we have implemented an escalation process for incidents in the area of occupational safety in order to develop suppliers. Business relationships can also be terminated if there is a repeat and depending on the severity of the incidents.
