BETTERING THE LIVES OF PEOPLE IN OUR SUPPLY CHAIN CASE STUDY Improved communication sales, production and human resources (HR) process creates shared teams to avoid the overtime issues. commitment and progress for From their discussions with the supplier, our weekly working hours SER specialists determined that prediction and planning based on the standard of 60 hours Managing weekly working hours is a persistent per week was not in place. They helped the challenge for suppliers and was made more factory establish a system to accurately plan difficult by the ongoing impacts of the pandemic. human resources and arrange a reasonable Not only were labor shortages an issue, but many production plan and rhythm using the factories were also under pressure to produce a 60-working-hours-per-week standard. This higher product volume to meet higher demand. system enabled the effective management and In addition, factories increased their reliance on implementation of control standards for working external labor agencies to quickly secure the labor hours at the operational level. they needed to maintain production levels. Now when the sales team receives client orders, An audit of one of Dell’s display suppliers they check with production to confirm capacity indicated a priority finding regarding weekly before committing to order timing. Thanks to working hour requirements. Dell’s social and this communication, sales can schedule a client environmental responsibility (SER) specialists delivery date that is based on capacity and immediately began work with the supplier to upholds reasonable working hours. Likewise, address issues impacting weekly working hours when production receives sales forecast data, and drive improvement. they immediately inform HR about labor needs so HR can recruit the necessary talent to meet First, our SER specialists worked with the supplier production demands. to raise the issue to senior management and gain This improved communication process not their commitment to address the issue. Next, only addressed the issue but also created a SER specialists identified that a key issue was shared responsibility and commitment to limit communication within the supplier organization. overtime hours. As a result, the supplier’s audit Sales teams were agreeing to product delivery finding was downgraded from priority to major. dates without understanding production The December 2020 audit showed that 68.0% constraints or labor limitations. Our specialists of workers exceeded the 60 hours per week worked with the supplier to help them establish standard; the November 2021 closure audit a better communication process between their showed this decreased to 13.0%. INTRO OUR PLAN GOALS DASHBOARD ADVANCING SUSTAINABILITY CULTIVATING INCLUSION TRANSFORMING LIVES ETHICS & PRIVACY SUPPLY CHAIN BY THE NUMBERS APPENDIX 119