Sedex: Collaboration, ethics grow a supply chain

   More than 25,000 organizations across the world have joined a new supply chain initiative Sedex, one of the largest collaborative platforms around managing an ethical supply chain and its data.
   Sedex is an online supply chain management tool that companies can use to identify and mitigate ethical risks in their global operations. The tool, founded in 2004, has seen an increase in growth due to new legislation and the past year’s focus on Apple over supply chain concerns around workers’ rights and treatment at partners’ operations.
   The end-goal is to make ethical decisions around supply chain management easier to make and use ethics as a deciding factor for contracts more commonplace. Part of that goal includes providing information and metrics to companies of all sizes to relieve some of the burden associated with multiple audits, questionnaires, and other information gathering processes.
   So far, Sedex provides a standard self-assessment questionnaire and market-leading risk analysis tools used to identify high-risk areas and practices within a company.
   Currently, Sedex’s members range from small family farms to large manufacturers, including nearly 500 retailers and brands. A list of its retailer and brand members can be found at its Website.
   The development and maintenance of the Sedex system is led by Sedex’s product development team and the software firm Enablon. Enablon is a provider of sustainability management services in multiple sectors and counts roughly 300 companies and 200,000 current users worldwide.