Why I Volunteered for an Audit

 

This blog was posted on behalf of Cheng Gang Bian, Vice president, General Manager of Intel Products (Chengdu) Ltd. in Chengdu, China. Bian leads and manages the Intel Chengdu site where his responsibilities include overseeing factory operations and employee relations; enriching the Intel image and brand; building strategic relationships with communities, media, governments and local authorities; and working with the industry ecosystem, government and society.

As the Site Manager of a bustling assembly/test complex in Chengdu, China with thousands of employees and multiple buildings and factories, I don’t typically volunteer for audits.  It’s not that I have anything to hide or I’m worried about the outcome of an audit, it’s more of a concern that audits can be very time consuming and disruptive to our daily operations. Therefore, when I was approached about undergoing an Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) third party audit covering our labor, environmental, health and safety practices – and taking place over multiple days - I was a little skeptical. However, once I learned that Intel wanted to demonstrate through an audit that we could: (1) successfully operate factories that are compliant with the EICC code, and (2) hold ourselves to the same auditing standards we expect our suppliers to meet; I understood the deeper value in doing this audit. 

I am happy to report that our Intel Chengdu site successfully completed an EICC third party audit and the results were very favorable. While we were not perfect, all of the items found were relatively minor and administrative in nature. The audit did give us insights and data that we can compare and contrast with the audit results of our suppliers. The audit also confirmed that our Chengdu facility is at “low risk” for environmental, social and governance issues, with only eight minor (administrative) non-conformances identified - all of which were closed within a short period of time. We strive to be transparent in our practices so we took the unprecedented step to make a summary of our audit findings public. We leveraged the learnings from this audit to close minor gaps in our training and procedures across our other sites, which is a standard practice across the Intel network. We will continue to not only look at ways to improve our performance in this area, but also the suppliers that we work with.