Despite more serious violations being identified, the overall trend among its 756 suppliers is towards higher compliance and this year’s audit does include an additional 197 suppliers who Apple has audited for the first time.
Apple said in the report, which is in its 12th year, that the proportion of ‘low performers,’ fell to 1 percent in 2017 down from 14 percent in 2014. ‘High performers’ reached a record high of 59 percent up from 47 percent the year before.
The audit found that there were 44 of what the company calls ‘core violations’ of its labour rules, which were double those reported in the previous year. Violations include employees paying excessive fees for a job as well as the falsification of working hours data.
This increase is being attributed to the fact that Apple brought on a number of new suppliers in 2017 and started tracking the working hours data of 1.3 million supplier employees, 30 percent more than in previous years.
Increasingly companies are looking to better manage risk associated with their supply chains, especially for those with a brand to protect. Apple represents a high profile example of what is a growing trend and one in which companies are taking a more hands-on approach with their suppliers.
Audits can be beneficial for companies of all sizes, especially those that may be smaller in size or that offer a high-risk product or service and companies that don’t think they need to be audited or that their findings don’t matter could be in for a nasty surprise.
Demand for audit services is growing and more companies are using them to assess their supply chains. For a growing number of companies, a clean bill of health when it comes to an audit will improve their chances of winning further business.
But in the end, it’s not just a single organisation that will benefit from undergoing an audit, but the wider industry too.
