THE KEY TO LOWERING THE COSTS OF AUDITING: AUTOMATION
RETHINKING SUSTAINABILITY AUDITS AND ASSESSMENTS SERIES: PART TWO
Welcome to Part Two of ADEC Innovations’ “Rethinking Sustainability Audits and Assessments” series. Over the course of this three-part series, we will examine why the process of assessments and auditing often falls short in providing business value to suppliers, and identifying solutions for both suppliers and their buyers to improve performance and lower supply chain liability.
Missed Part One? Learn how to combat audit fatigue among suppliers here.
One of the biggest challenges involved in conducting effective audits is the scale of the costs involved. Managing supply chain connections, conducting assessments, tracking corrective actions, and aggregating all this information into useful reports are all time-consuming and labor-intensive activities if performed manually. However, an effective automated solution can greatly reduce these costs, taking on much of the labor of auditing. CleanChain, an ADEC Innovation, is a unique digital chemical information management platform that helps to automate the auditing process. By making use of its tracking and aggregation features, brands can overcome much of the burden of auditing and assessing their suppliers.
Automating Down-Stream Supply Chain Management
CleanChain’s key solution to the difficulties of managing supply chain information is distributing the work across the whole of each supply chain. By their nature, supply chains are exponential—for a large brand to consider the entirety of its supply chain, it must look at its direct suppliers, and at those suppliers’ own direct suppliers, and so on. The automation and labor-saving that CleanChain offers incentivizes all of a brand’s suppliers to participate, and distributes the work across all of those organizations. In CleanChain, a brand only needs to manage its own direct connections - it can rely on each of its suppliers, and every one of their suppliers, to manage their own connections. At every point, information is managed by those who are closest to it, improving accuracy while reducing the burden on any one company.
Automating Updates with Evergreen Assessments
One of the main reasons to conduct audits and assessments is to track the progress of manufacturing sites over time. This usually requires brands to compare every new assessment for each of their suppliers’ sites with previous assessments, which is both complex and time-consuming. With CleanChain’s evergreen functionality, there is only ever one assessment per site. Instead of being entirely re-run every year, each assessment is updated as the relevant information enters the system. CleanChain captures snapshots of important changes in the assessment to provide on-demand comparison of any two time periods, both simplifying the assessment process and providing easier access to vital insights.
Tracking Corrective Action and Status
The process of assessing a supplier or a site will often result in issuing a corrective action plan. It is critical that future audits be able to trace the progress of these plans, from the initial discovery of issues, through the requirements given and the actions taken, including all the documentation necessary to verify compliance. Ordinarily, this would be a labor-intensive manual process. CleanChain’s system gathers all this data through assessment questions, allowing suppliers to clearly and transparently provide the findings of their actions to their clients, and allowing those clients to easily track the progress of the plan.
Automating Comprehensive Reports
Building reports that are comprehensive yet concise, informative yet accessible, can be one of the most time-consuming parts of the audit process. Information must be aggregated from a variety of sources, physical and digital; data must be processed into meaningful and readable charts and graphs; scoring systems must be developed to accurately compare the performance of different suppliers and sites. CleanChain does all this work behind the scenes through its insight dashboards. Each CleanChain user’s personal dashboard generates charts comparing the performance of different chemicals, suppliers and sites, and their progress over time, with plenty of room to dig down into the data for further analysis. With these tools, communicating the results of audits and assessments to executive management and to suppliers is easier than ever before.
The time-consuming and labor-intensive nature of the audit process can result in significant overheads for a textile brand. Tools like CleanChain can greatly reduce these costs by automating the processes of managing supply chain connections, conducting assessments, tracking corrective actions and aggregating information. The widespread adoption of automated tools like CleanChain is revolutionizing the way companies understand auditing. And, thanks to these tools, cheaper, less time-consuming audits are the future.
CleanChain, an ADEC Innovation, helps you gain visibility and insights into the chemical use in your supply chain. Want to find out more? Book a free demo with us today to find out how CleanChain can help you engage your supply chain and improve your chemical management initiatives.
Keep an eye on your inbox for the next installment in our “Rethinking Sustainability Audits and Assessments” series.
